Academic Review 2024

63 ACADEMIC REVIEW 2024

Introduction This essay will discuss the ethical issues surrounding embryonic stem cell therapy compared to adult and induced pluripotent stem cell therapy procedures. It will aim to consider different viewpoints relating to the ethical implications that surround stem cell harvesting, therapeutic and clinical uses. The definition of ‘ethics’ that will be discussed in this essay is what is defined by the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary as ‘a system of moral principles or rules of behaviour’ (Oxford University Press, 2022). Stem cells raise a multitude of ethical complications as sourcing pluripotent stem cell lines from oocytes leads to disputes regarding the human personhood of the potential human life. However, there are several other methods of harvesting stem cells that create fewer ethical concerns. With any human stem cell (hSC) research there are difficult problems to consider, including consent processes to donate materials for hSC research, clinical Embryonic stem cells INTRODUCTION TO EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS Embryonic stem cells are derived from the inner cell mass of a blastocyst that is between 5 to 7 days old. Embryonic stem cells are used for their particular properties: their pluripotency means that their cells have the ability to replicate indefinitely. Due to the embryonic stem cells’ pluripotent properties, they are able to differentiate into all derivatives of the three primary germ layers; the ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm layers (Winograd, 2008). This pluripotent property makes them valuable in a medical sense as their versatile nature allows them to be used to regenerate or repair diseased tissue and organs. However, human embryonic stem cell usage is politically and ethically controversial because it results in the destruction of human embryos. This has ethical implications as each embryo has the potential to become a human life if it was implanted into a woman’s uterus. Some people believe that an embryo should have the same moral status as an adult or an unborn child. Some people of religious faith and moral conviction believe that ‘human life begins at conception’ (England, 1996), meaning that every embryo is a human life and that its destruction kills that life. By taking this standpoint they believe that taking a blastocyst and removing its inner cell mass to harvest an embryonic stem cell is comparable to murder.

trials of hSC therapies in the early stages, and legal conditions of hSC research. It is important to clarify what stem cells are: stem cells are immature, immunoprivileged and generative cells that have the ability to proliferate to create differentiated cells and undergo the process of maturation to form a wide variety of other cells. There are various sources of stem cells such as embryonic, adult, and induced pluripotent stem cells; each one of these holds their own positive and negative points and carries a range of ethical problems. This essay will debate whether the ethical issues associated with stem cell research are too great, making stem cell research a non-viable option for scientific uses. I will conclude by weighing up all the ethical issues with the positives that stem cell research has produced in regenerative medicine and other scientific fields of research and I will address the ethical issues surrounding embryonic stem cell therapy compared to adult and induced pluripotent stem cell therapy.

ETHICAL ISSUES SURROUNDING EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS

Other people have a different view regarding the ethics of using an embryo, believing that it is not at fertilisation that an embryo is alive, but later in the development when it is classed as ‘living.’ Many hold a middle ground thinking that the early embryo deserves special respect as a potential human being, but that its use is scientifically justified with careful oversight and informed consent from the woman or couple donating the embryo for research (Lo & Parham, 2009).

“ ...human embryonic stem cell usage is politically and ethically controversial... ”