ethical implications of cloning and stem cell research

RUNNING HEAD : Stem Cell Research

Stem Cell Research

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Almost every single piece of technology that has had a transformative effect on civilization has been confronted with controversy . This is true of the printing press , the long-range aircraft and the contraceptive pharmaceutical and it continues to hold true in the era of the biofuels , genetically modified food and the Internet . So it comes as no surprise that when biologists announced their successful isolation of human embryonic stem cells that can potentially differentiate into any

other human cell type , much controversy arose (AAAS , 2007

While the vast majority of techno-liberals maintain that the development and application of this breakthrough should be free from outside interference in the form of policy and legislation , there exists a significant opposition to it . Such opposition is grounded in the belief that human life begins at the cellular stage , immediately after fertilization , and therefore any manipulation and use of these cells for whatever purpose , even if it is for the treatment of disease . This is because , despite the potential boon which stem cell applications may bestow in this regard , it effectively counts as the use of human life and is therefore an immoral technology . However , others maintain that human life does not begin at the cellular level , and because embryonic stem cells are not sentient , they do not possess the same kind of personhood as say , a 6 month old fetus (Robinson , 2008

Previously , the stance maintained by the Clinton administration was against granting funds for the use of embryos in a research context (National Archives , 1994 ) However , following the aforementioned breakthrough , the Clinton administration reconsidered their stance , this time stating that all embryonic research must be conducted on embryos discarded following in-vitro fertility treatments and no embryos are to be created expressly for stem cell research and experimentation . The Bush administration sees this differently , charging that federal funding may only be provided for research on cells already in existence . Bush concluded that research is permissible on embryos already destroyed , but that further destruction of human embryos must be curtailed (AAAS 2007

While this was an unsurprising decision given Bush 's relatively conservative stance towards technological policy , it has not been welcomed with broad satisfaction even among opponents of stem cell research , some who declare that there should be no research under any circumstances . In any case , it is quite likely that no one policy taken towards human stem cell research is ever going to satisfy all camps of the debate , whether its techno-liberal atheists or religious conservatives or even the indifferent . Perhaps the only sensible policy approach to adopt towards stem cell research is to embrace it with cautious skepticism

It is practically impossible to ban technology . As Vinay Gupta (2008 maintains , any technological discovery ripples beyond the confines of governments and geography such that a college professor 8000 miles away can make a discovery which will be at your doorstep in 48 hours and make an entire area of...