Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 7
Ethical Aspects of Stem Cell Research
The important thing in science is not so much to obtain
new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.
- Sir William Lawrence Bragg
Stem cell biology is an extremely active field in biology, not only from a scientific
but also from the political, social, and ethical perspective. It is well known that ethi-
cal aspect involves for many strong argument that using embryonic stem cells is
equal to homicide. The other argument is: How one can give embryonic stem cells
to somebody, when the immune system will not tolerate “nonself”? This obstacle
was overcome by the concept of therapeutic cloning, in which the nucleus of stem
cell (through microsurgery) is replaced by patient's nucleus (nuclear transfer). In
that way, embryonic body (which is in cytoplasm of the zygot and will give stem
cells) will be “supervised” by patient's genetic codes and orchestrate patient's cod-
ing of specific proteins. They will not be foreign to immune system and will not
affect the engraftment.
Despite scientific solution in order to get the most potent multipotent stem cells,
which can diversify indefinitely, the first argument is still socially and politically
significantly powerful. Meanwhile, adult stem cells have been found in different
sources of the body and are more and more successfully used in the treatment of a
number of diseases [
1
]. Embryonic stem cells are recently used in the case of two
different types of macular degeneration in Harvard Medical School, and have shown
encouraging results [
2
]. The time is necessary to pass and evaluate both practical
and ethical issues.
