An ethicist should be prepared to go down any road - but they will arrive at
different destinations of course. Philosophy is no discipline for the fearful
(or even the cautious sometimes).
What I find interesting is that for some time, interesting things have been
going on in vet, science - in treatment of arthritic knees for instance, it has
been possible for some time to extract fat from a mammal, spin down autologous
stem cells from it and inject them into an arthritic joint to repair joints.
Seems to work quite well. Not done for humans yet? A similar scenario occurred
with knee arthroscopies many years ago when humans were still undergoing
radical joint operations but large animal vets were using fibre optics and
keyholes. Eventually it was decided that if it was good enough for million
dollar racehorses, then maybe we could risk it on footballers.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.soultheft.com
Author/Publisher:
The SLR Compendium:
revised edition -
http://blur.by/19Hb8or
The TLR Compendium
http://blur.by/1eDpqN7
On 31/01/2014, at 7:04 AM, Charles Geilfuss wrote:
> It wasn't so much politics but the fact that at the time the only
> reliable source for active stem cells was from human embryos. Stem cells
> could be obtained from adult tissues but they are rarer and difficult to
> activate. And as of yet, no one had figured out how to induce stem cells
> from adult somatic cells. Initially, embryonic stem cells were obtained
> from aborted embryos and a number of self-replicating stem cell lines were
> established. George W mandated that no Federal funds could be used to
> establish new embryonic stem cell line from aborted embryos, but the
> existing stem cell lines were OK to use. He did this for two reasons: his
> opposition to abortion and secondly some were pushing to allow frozen in
> vitro fertilized embryos, if not implanted into someones womb, be diverted
> to stem cell research use. Personally I have no problem with the first.
> Elective abortion is the law of the land. Why not use what would otherwise
> be wasted. The second reason however is the leading edge of a very slippery
> slope and you can be sure there are plenty of ethicists who are reluctant
> to go down that road.
--
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