E-Book Overview
Is it acceptable from an ethical point of view to use stem cells from human embryos for scientific research and clinical therapy? And what are the weaknesses and strengths of various opinions and positions when they are critically evaluated? These are the main problems dealt with in this book. The various chapters as a whole give a comprehensive, many-sided and balanced discussion of the subject. The book contains contributions from biological, medical, social, political, philosophical and theological perspectives.
The authors have been chosen because of their professional competence, many of them being respected scholars on a top international level. They give an updated contribution from their own discipline in order to enlighten the different aspects of the common theme. The authors cover various positions and evaluations with regard to the question of the use of embryonic stem cells for research and therapy.
The book is written for several audiences: a) scholars and professionals working with stem cell research or with the ethical questions arising from this field (people from biology, medicine, law, philosophy, theology etc.), b) advanced and graduate students within the same professional disciplines and c) politicians and the general public interested in the burning ethical problems which are intensively debated in many countries.
E-Book Content
Stem Cells, Human Embryos and Ethics Lars Østnor Editor Stem Cells, Human Embryos and Ethics Interdisciplinary Perspectives Editor Lars Østnor MF Norwegian School of Theology Oslo, Norway ISBN: 978-1-4020-6988-8 e-ISBN: 978-1-4020-6989-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2008922457 © 2008 Springer Science + Business Media, B.V. except Chapter 12 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Cover picture: The cover image is a graphic art picture called “Hyss” by the Norwegian artist John Thørrisen. Used by permission of the artist. Printed on acid-free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 springer.com Foreword The successful isolation of human embryonic stem cells by Dr. Jamie Thomson in 1998 has lead to subsequent derivation of over a hundred additional lines. There has been a significant improvement in the efficiency of derivation and a number of variations on the basic methodology have been described. These include isolation of parthenogenetic lines, isolation from the morula stage embryo and isolation from later stages of embryonic development. Equally importantly there have been reports of successful reprogramming of adult cells into embryonic stem cells and derivation of epiblast like cells. Thus there are possibilities of obtaining cells that may not make teratomas or contribute to the germline or be classified as living embryos and may even bypass the ethical issues raised by oocyte donation while still retaining many of the characteristics of a pluripotent stem cell. These successes and the ethical and social issues that manipulating ones own genome raise have lead to a fierce debate that has not simply been confined to scientists or ethicists but has spilled into the mainstream and in some cases been politicized. Each group has taken its own extreme position and in the case of the United States individual states have taken positions that differ from the official federal policy. National-level review is required in only a few countries (e.g., the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority in the UK) and in the US, the idea of national