For more than 30 years, beginning with the Reagan administration's refusal to support and provide oversight for embryo research, and continuing to the present in congressionally imposed limits on funding for such research, progress in infertility medicine and the development of stem cell therapies has been seriously delayed by a series of political interventions. In almost all cases, these interventions result from a view of the moral status of human embryo premised largely on religious assumptions. Although some believe that these (...) interventions are valid expressions of religious values in the public sector, it is argued here that they, in fact, contradict Rawls's conception of public reasoning. Both the prohibition of research involving the human embryo as well as bans on federal funding for embryo-related research place the particular religious views of some citizens above the pressing health needs of almost all, and thus violate the ideal of civility implicit in the Rawlsian standard. (shrink)

Research using human embryonic stem cells raises an array of complex ethical issues, including, but by no means limited to, the moral status of developing human life. Unfortunately much of the public discussion fails to take into account this complexity. Advocacy for liberal and conservative positions on human embryonic stem cell research can be simplistic and misleading. Ethical concepts such as truth-telling, scientific integrity, and social justice should be part of the debate over federal support for human embryonic stem cell (...) research. Moreover, the debate should be conducted in accord with principles of deliberative democracy, including respect for people holding competing views. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the issue of what to do if a couple who generates embryos chooses to lawfully, and in their (and my) view, ethnically discard those embryos. Specifically, is it appropriate to use the cells that come from “excess” embryos in medical research instead of discarding them when a couple has ceased trying to have any additional children?

While society debates whether and how to use public funds to support work on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), many scientific groups and businesses debate a different question — the extent to which patents that cover such stem cells should be permitted to limit or to tax their research. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), a non-profit foundation that manages intellectual property generated by researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, owns three patents that have been at the heart (...) of the latter controversy The story of WARF's patents and the controversy they have fostered highlights not only continuing tensions between proprietary and nonproprietary approaches to developing science and technology, but also an at least partly reassuring capacity of public and private sectors to deal with those tensions in a way that can render them substantially manageable, and frequently more manageable as a technology matures. More particularly, the cumulative story of WARF's patents features three leitmotifs that suggest how an attentive and engaged public sector might commonly succeed in working with public and private sector actors to achieve workable balances between proprietary rights and more general social interests: (1) right holders' decisions to pursue less than full rights assertion or enforcement; (2) the ability of government and other public sector actors to help bring about such decisions through co-option or pressure; and (3) the frequent availability or development of technological alternatives that limit research bottlenecks. (shrink)

Although the first human embryonic stem cells were produced in 1998, the direction of U.S. policy on stem cell research was set nearly 20 years earlier when the recommendations of a congressionally established Ethics Advisory Board were ignored by the Reagan administration. Thus began an unprecedented and unparalleled 30-year-long history of political intrusions in an area of scientific and biomedical research that has measurable impacts on the health of Americans. Driving these intrusions were religiously informed public policy positions that have (...) usually escaped critical ethical analysis. Here I record my own encounters with this history of intrusions and the thinking behind them.My most abrupt encounter with the politics of stem cell research occurred on September 6, 2006, at a hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Related Agencies, chaired by Senator Arlen Specter. Just a week before, scientists at Advanced Cell Technology, a small Massachusetts biotech company, had published a paper in the journal Nature in which they described a method for extracting stem cells from early human embryos while leaving the embryos intact and viable. As head of ACT’s Ethics Advisory Board, I had supported this research. (shrink)

While society debates whether and how to use public funds to support work on human embryonic stem cells, many scientific groups and businesses debate a different question — the extent to which patents that cover such stem cells should be permitted to limit or to tax their research. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, a non-profit foundation that manages intellectual property generated by researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, owns three patents that have been at the heart of the (...) latter controversy. The story of WARF’s patents and the controversy they have fostered highlights not only continuing tensions between proprietary and nonproprietary approaches to developing science and technology, but also an at least partly reassuring capacity of public and private sectors to deal with those tensions in a way that can render them substantially manageable, and frequently more manageable as a technology matures. (shrink)

Lost at times in the heat of debate about stem cell research, or any controversial advanced technology, is the need for precision in debate and discussion. The details matter a great deal, ranging from the need to use words that have precise definitions, to accurately quote colleagues and adversaries, and to cite scientific and medical results in a way that reflects the quality, rigor, and reliability of the work at issue. Regrettably, considerable inaccuracy has found its way into the debates (...) about stem cells, on all sides, with consequent fogging of the issues.A key detail that is often overlooked in the debates about the uses of human embryonic stem cells in research comes from the nature of in vitro fertilization treatment for infertility. Specifically, there are many frozen human embryos that are in excess of reproductive needs of the couple who generated them, and that must be either frozen indefinitely, donated to another couple, or destroyed. (shrink)

In 1998, researchers established the first human embryonic stem cell line. Their scientific triumph triggered an ethics and policy argument that persists today. Bioethicists, religious leaders, government officials, patient advocates, and scientists continue to debate whether this research poses a promise, a threat, or a mixed ethical picture for society.Scientists are understandably excited about the knowledge that could come from studying human embryonic stem cells. Most of them believe these cells offer a precious opportunity to learn more about why diseases (...) develop and how they might be prevented or attacked. In their quest to gain support for stem cell research, scientists and others have claimed that the research could generate cures and treatment for everything from heart disease to cancer. (shrink)

In this paper I will address whether the restriction on the creation of human embryos solely for the purpose of research in which they will be used and destroyed in the creation of human stem cell lines is ethically justified. Of course, a cynical but perhaps accurate reading of the new Obama policy is that leaving this restriction in place was done for political, not ethical, reasons, in light of the apparent public opposition to creating embryos for use in this (...) research. But the issue of whether the restriction is ethically justified remains important, even if only for another day in the policy arena. (shrink)

The intense and extensive debate over human embryonic stem cell research has focused primarily on the moral status of the human embryo. Some commentators assign full moral status of normal adult human beings to the embryo from the moment of its conception. At the other extreme are those who believe that a human embryo has no significant moral status at the time it is used and destroyed in stem cell research. And in between are many intermediate positions that assign an (...) embryo some degree of moral status between none and full. This controversy and the respective positions, like the abortion controversy, is by now well understood, despite the lack of progress in resolving it. I have argued briefly elsewhere that early embryos do not have significant moral status, but I do not want to reenter that debate here. Instead, I want to focus on an issue that has had relatively little explicit and separate attention, but is likely to loom larger in light of the Obama administration’s partial lifting of the Bush administration’s restriction on the embryos that can be used in stem cell research that receives federal funding. (shrink)