• Question: what do you personnaly think about the unethical parts of stem cell science and do you think that these parts of science are needed to progress towards curing otherwise uncureable diseases such as alzheimer's disease?

    Asked by 10blackmanjoseph to Anzy, Aoife, Dave, Matt, Tomasz on 12 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: David Christensen

      David Christensen answered on 12 Nov 2013:

      I’ll try to explain first why there are issues of ethics around stem cell research. Embryonic stem cells are produced from embryos and some people believe that using human embryos is wrong, because they believe those to be alive and therefore using them for experiments is murder. This gives us all a choice: do we believe that embryos are living people or not? Do we believe that using an embryo is murder or not? Personally, I do not believe that an embryo, which is basically a tiny ball of cells is a living person, so I don’t think there is anything unethical about stem cell research. But I respect that some people are against research with embryonic stem cells because they don’t agree with use of embryos.

      Because I don’t believe that it is unethical and I do think that research on embryonic stem cells could lead to treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s, I think continuing research with embryonic stem cells is really important. However, it will quite a few years before we get a lot of the cures that we would hope to get from embryonic stem cells.

    • Photo: Aoife O'Shaughnessy-Kirwan

      Aoife O'Shaughnessy-Kirwan answered on 13 Nov 2013:

      I think David has pretty much covered this but to echo what he’s said, I also don’t personally feel that the research is unethical.

    • Photo: Matthew Tomlinson

      Matthew Tomlinson answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      I agree with what David has said and I think embryonic stem cells play an important part in understanding diseases and looking for treatments. I also don’t think the use of embryonic stem cells is unethical, but I understand that people may have different viewpoints to my own. I guess what it comes down to is when do you say something is alive, for me it is the beginning of consciousness and I don’t believe a ball of cells is capable of this. Of course there are alternatives in some areas to embryonic stem cells, these are adult stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells, these come from consenting donors and do not have anything like the ethical questions that embryonic stem cells have.

      With regards to other areas of ethical debate such as the use of animals I am a little more cautious, although I do feel that animal research is an important part of getting a therapy into use. I think as scientists we have to act responsibly and not use more animals than we need to, and if we can avoid their use then we should. The UK has very strict guidelines about the use of animals in research and I think if animal research has to happen then it should happen in countries like ours where these guidelines exist and are enforced.

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