How should society deal with the research controversy? Stem cells are specialized cells which are formed at the very beginning stages of human embryo development. These types of cells are very unique because at the stage at which they are developed they are able to transform into many different kinds of tissue types in the human body. Stem cells can be obtained from tissues during a miscarriage or from embryos produced in labs. When the cells are isolated from everything in labs, they can be grown up and stored for later use. The whole controversy within the stem cell research deals with concerns surrounding abortion, which in turn deals with cloning. Many people in this world have a lot of different opinions when discussing cloning or abortion.
Most of these opinions about this subject lie within the moral and ethical concerns of which is morally or ethically right to do or not. Right now some stem cell research is government funded for certain companies, but people could get around this by receiving private funds to start up their own stem cell research center. What are the legal issues with stem cell research? There are many laws that are state and federal in the United States that protects vulnerable human embryos from harmful experiments, but there also are many different ways medical technicians and doctors can use to get around these laws. According to the Department of Health and Human Services in 1999, the government allowed funding for human embryonic stem cell search to go ahead.
The reason behind this states that “stem cells are not embryos and that research using cells obtained by destroying human embryos can be divorced from the destruction itself” (Duffy 1). Another law that is being debated by many activist groups and government agencies is to permit researchers to use fetal tissue obtained from elective abortions, which requires abortions that the have been performed for reasons which are entirely unrelated to the research objectives. This actually means that a legal aborted fetus’s tissues’ can be used for research only if it’s a legitimate abortion. So if a person were to purposely abort a fetus for research, it would be against the law, but a legally aborted fetus wouldn’t be against the law to do research on.
This whole idea of using aborted fetus to perform stem cell research on is just wrong, either way it should be illegal because at one time that fetus was a living thing. In many different states there are laws that protect embryonic human beings outside the womb and most of the states prohibit experiments on embryos outside the womb. According to Duffy, the states that include this law are Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Utah (2). So out of fifty states in the United States, only eight of them have laws that protect embryonic human beings outside the womb, but the other states might have even stricter laws than this.
For example, the California Bill SB 253 authorizes the use of stem cells for research that will hopefully lead to new treatments. This bill also is the first law in the United States that specifically authorizes research into the potential of stem cells for therapeutic purposes, whether extracted from adults or from embryos (Duffy 2). Although federal funding is being used to conduct research on human embryonic stem cells, there still are some restrictions on what they can and can’t do. According to Duffy, federal funds will not be used for derivation or use of stem cell lines derived from newly destroyed embryos, creation of any human embryos for research purposes, and cloning of human embryos for any purposes (3).
What are the pros and cons of stem cell usage? There are many cons when dealing with stem cell research and the list could go on for ever, but the following are just a few. When using frozen embryos left over from in vitro fertilization they are currently used for stem cell research. Anti-abortion slogan “Abortion stops a beating heart.” Fortunately there is no heart in a pre-implantation embryo. But provided by these embryos can lead into stem cells that can lead to great work done with curing disease.
Some people still feel that these are still considered life because they are embryos. According to Judie Brown, of American Life League, “these are the tiniest person,” and “that stem cells research is a destruction of life” (4). There also has been test done on fetal tissues and the side effects have been labeled disastrous and horrible. Most Americans in this country have been able to see relativism in these issues.
They are more likely to accept abortions at the early stage rather than the late stage. They are also more tolerant of a single abortion than multiple abortions as well. This then goes again to say that some Americans believe that life begins at conception. On the other side of the issue there are many pros as well. Some opinions of anti-abortionist are that they should not confuse stem cell research with abortion because separating the two is very important. Stem cells that private scientific firm use is not from a woman’s womb, which they ” ve never been aborted.
Adult stem cell research has been proven to do the same as embryos, for instance using from bone marrow hasn’t proved that it always works. Also it is important to realize that the scientists who study stem cells now, get most of their sperm and eggs from donations to produce embryos. All over America abortion clinics routinely discard thousands of left over embryos that are unusable to placement in wombs. By doing this, the abortion clinics are really wasting good embryos that can be used for research down the road.
As early as 1973, seventy-five countries all over the world legalized abortion. Unfortunately, America didn’t legalize it until down the road when abortion was finally declared a constitutional right. A 7-2 majority of justices said that the right to abortion is included in the right to privacy. America also has an importance in religion, which most religions believe that abortion is wrong because it is killing an innocent life form.
What are the moral implications associated with this topic? There are many moral and ethical issues that can be linked to this particular topic. The most obvious question to be asked is, “is stem cell research ethical, or even right?” Scientists have several different choices when performing stem cell research. One way is the use of aborted babies, but a second, less controversial method is the use of the placenta of the mother, bone marrow, or the umbilical cord blood in actual births. It is true that these methods of research are used mainly for the finding of treatments for diseases, but according to the British Medical Journal, “given the right environment, bone marrow cells can be used to regenerate muscle tissue” (The Center for Bioethics…
6). By using something other than the actual aborted fetus to complete the research, the controversy over this subject wouldn’t cause so many problems and arguments. A second major issue dealing with the morality of stem cell research is the question of homicide. Many protestors of stem cell research argue that it is not right to kill one human being to benefit another, especially when the benefits may not come for a long while.
Scientists argue that an unborn fetus is in fact, is not a human being at all. But an international scientific consensus recently recognized that, “human embryos are biologically human beings beginning at fertilization” (The Center for Bioethics… 3). So, according to this finding, stem cell research is in fact murder. Finally, a third major moral and ethical concern dealing with stem cell research is a religious one, that scientists are just trying to “play God.” This argument deals with the actual research itself, more than it deals with the actual process of the research. The reason for stem cell research is mainly to re-grow certain parts of the body to replace other human beings “bad” body parts, mainly organs.
Another reason is to try and find cures for diseases. While these might sound like great ideas, many people believe that things happen for a reason, that people get sick and die for a reason, what makes it our right to change one’s destiny (Morgan 1)? By advancing scientifically this way, one can assume that humans are looking for the “perfect world.” A recent statement from Health and Human Services states, “stem cell research is too promising to be slowed or prohibited… we are underscoring the sort of utopianism and hubris that could blind us to the truth of what we are doing and the harm we could cause to ourselves and others” (The Center For Bioethics… 3). One can assume that once society achieves these goals, scientists just wouldn’t stop.
New and more controversial issues are likely to arise, for example human cloning. What may seem like a great idea now, may be the end of the quality of life desired for all humans. Will the number of abortions conducted or the decision to abort be lessened if stem cell research is not used? The question of whether or not the abortion rate would decrease if stem cells research was not used or allowed is a hard one to answer. One could assume that the numbers would decrease because of the possibility of secretly paying women for aborted fetuses. One could also assume that mothers of unwanted pregnancies may be more willing to abort their babies in the name of research, but if this research was not available, maybe these mothers would choose an alternate route instead, like adoption. Without this option, women wouldn’t have to worry as much about this pressing issue.
But because we don’t know this for a fact the numbers could very well stay the same. Again it is almost impossible to know the true raw numbers of abortions each year. This is why this issue is virtually impossible to answer. While this issue can be easily argued both ways, society needs to choose for itself which way to go. With many different researchers and scientists out there, there are many other ideas dealing with stem cell research, the possibilities are endless. The controversy following stem cell research will be argued for many years to come.
The problems with mothers donating their unborn fetuses to research will probably never disappear. There will never be a way to stop scientists from secretly performing research. But in a way stopping the scientists could be a bad idea because you need to remember that they are the brains of these operations and without them the world probably wouldn’t be where it is today. There are also many different opinions regarding whether doing stem cell research is ethically or morally fit for society, but something that many people do before looking up the facts on an experiment is to judge the topic before the facts are stated about experiment. For example, stem cell research is judged before even considered due to people’s own moral and ethical standings.
Not knowing about stem cell research isn’t enough evidence to down grade it just because it has the potential to use parts of people or fetus to help other people out, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a wrong thing to do. Although using cells from another person, be it an adult or fetus some people are still against the idea because researchers could be killing a living thing to save another, which by many people’s standards is morally wrong. Since the research is moving so rapidly, society needs to come to a decision about stem cell research before it goes beyond societies wishes.