What's the right thing to do?
What's the appropriate way about going about this?
Does this question have any answer?
Over the last several years, stem cell research has been associated with a
lot of enthusiasm, but it's also been associated with a lot of ethical issues.
Recently we've seen a lot attention and a lot of
scientific excitement over iPS, or induced pluripotent stem cell research.
This is very exciting science.
>> You can take a skin cell like a cheek swab
or you know medical waste from a procedure and take those
cells, give them a little sort of fountain of youth cocktail,
and turn them into something that is like embryonic stems cells.
That, that can turn into it is pretty potent
that can turn into any cell in the human body.
Science by its nature moves very quickly and
unpredictably and generally out of the public spotlight.
So, it's generally not until after the
science the initial science has already been
produced and published that policy makers or
the general public actually hear about it.
When President Obama issued his executive order
rescinding the Bush administration order he directed
the National Institutes of Health to develop
guidelines for federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research.
And it's dramatically increased the amount of stem-cell
research that's actually funded here in the US.
So the National Academy's guidelines, which were the first set of
guidelines out there at all in the United States for governing
stem-cell research, arose out of the interest of scientists who understood
very clearly that this was a, a socially controversial area of science.
And in the absence of any federal regulation, went to
the National Academies and said, please develop guidance, develop a,
a system under which we can operate so that we
are accountable and so that we prevent, you know, bad outcomes.
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Scientists go into science to do science not to do law, so we developed
a project, or looking at international collaboration
in stem cell research in the context of this highly varied
landscape of, of policies governing stem cell research.
And this turned out to be the beginning of what we now call the Hinxton group.
Which is an international consortium of
scientists, ethicists, policy makers, lawyers, philosophers who
are interested in as I said
before, fostering ethically and scientifically defensible research.
>> Some of the most heated ethical controversies
related to embryonic stem cell research have related
to the fact that embryos need to be
destroyed in order to create embryonic stem cell lines.
Professional groups were coming into the picture saying,
we know that there are ethical issues involved.
We know that there are different laws
locally, nationally and internationally, and they wanted to
provide scientists with a way of negotiating
among these different laws and, and ethical norms.
Under the National Academy of Sciences, this is known
as an escrow, nothing to do with the mortgage crisis.
But the Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee for the ISSCR,
the International Society of Stem Cell Research, they recommend a SCROC.
A Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee because they
took on a larger task of not just looking
at the ethical issues with embryonic stem cell
research, but those of all sorts of stem cells.
At Hopkins, we obviously took notice of these major national and
international guidelines, assembled a committee of
people from across the university, given
that we do a considerable amount of stem cell research and made
a decision to proceed with establishing an SCROC here at Johns Hopkins.
We constructed a multidisciplinary
committee that includes scientists, includes
ethicists, attorneys and non institutional members so we have
relevant expertise in the room to consider the range
of issues that are associated with stem cell research.
If a scientist at John Hopkins wants to do research involving human embryonic
stem cells, either research directed at
deriving new human embryonic stem cell lines
or doing laboratory work involving existing human embryonic stem cell
lines, then she or he has to come to the SCROC for approval for that research.
>> What bioethicist and, and folks like myself who are scientists, who are
doing work in ethics and policy try to do is, to get ahead of that curve a bit.
So to try to forecast, by speaking with scientists and working
with scientists, try to identify what are those issues that are
coming down the pike scientifically, that are gonna be of interest
and potentially of concern to the general public and to policymakers.
And to try to be proactive about developing guidance for how policymakers
and the public might regard or regulate or oversee emerging technologies.
>> Being in the field of bioethics is fantastic.
You get to take the hardest questions, the things
that people talk about at the dinner table or
at a cocktail party and really study them, really
try to figure out what's the right thing to do.
What's the appropriate way about going about this.
Does this question have any answer?
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