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Stem Cell Trials – Should They Go Ahead? Why Harm to Patients Is Not a Reason to Stop Them

Stem Cell Trials – Should They Go Ahead? Why Harm to Patients Is Not a Reason to Stop Them

Professor Savulescu comments:

Professor Julian Savulescu is Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics and Director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford, Director of the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, and Director of the Program on the Ethics of the New Biosciences. He was also recently awarded a major Arts and Humanities Research Council grant on Cognitive Science and Religious Conflict.


THE FDA has approved for the first time a clinical trial of embryonic stem cells to treat spinal injury patients. The trial will be conducted by Geron. A similar trial by Reneuron has been approved recently in the UK (The Scotsman, and the BBC). The research in the UK to treat stroke patients has already attracted stern criticism from “ethical campaigners.” The first wave predictably objected on the ground that it involved abortion "It involves cannibalising an unborn child.” But no child was aborted for the purposes of providing stem cells. These would have involved abortions that would anyway have occurred for a variety of reasons. Such opponents predictably object to anything involving destruction of embryos and fetuses – abortion, IVF, prenatal testing, contraception – so it is hardly surprising that they would object to this form of medical treatment.

The second wave of ethical campaigners, not clearly distinct from the first, claim now that the treatment is too risky. But is it too risky?

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Announcement of Neuroethics Lectures: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Professor Walter Sinnott-Armstrong will be giving two Leverhulme lectures and a special ethics seminar on Neuroscience and Neuroethics at the University of Oxford as part of his Leverhulme Visiting Professorship programme 2008 – 10. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong is Professor of Philosophy and Hardy Professor of Legal Studies, at Dartmouth College, and is and Co-Director, MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Project. See extended post for full details of these lectures

 

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A wonderful, unspecific day

Tuesday was a wonderful, exciting, day.   But the job of the philosophical blogger is to look beyond the general euphoria, and seek out discussion points.  

A commentator in the ChicagoTribune remarked that President Obama’s inaugural speech was ‘heavy on allusion, short on specifics’.   That was probably not intended as a criticism, however, and it would have been unreasonable if it had been.  If you are trying to engage everybody in a nation which has, as the President said, a ‘patchwork heritage’ of ‘Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers’ the only possible way to do it is to avoid specifics.  Everyone can unite round ‘mutual interest and respect’, having things in their ‘rightful place’ and  ‘a future of peace and dignity’, because these are terms that, as philosophers would say, have strong connotations but no particular denotation.  We know they imply approval of whatever is being alluded to, but we may not know much about what that is.

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Non possumus?

These days the Vatican’s statements sound a bit like a broken record, repeating continuously “Non possumus”. It started at the beginning of December when Benedict XVI refused to support President Sarkozy’s proposal that encourages the governments of the World to decriminalize homosexuality, proposal that should be added to the next UN Declaration of human rights.
It’s worth knowing that in the world more or less eighty countries have rules that punish sexual acts between homosexual people.

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Tattoos and taboos: making end of life preferences known when it matters

A 79 year old euthanasia campaigner in New Zealand has attracted local and international publicity after having the words ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ tattooed across her chest. Although this seems unlikely to be widely emulated her action highlights the problem that at the time when it might be most important to make one’s views known, patients are often unconscious or incompetent.

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I just don’t care about animals that much!

Despite the protestations of those opposed to the use of animals in research, the fundamental differences between people over the treatment of animals seems to lie with the weight that we are prepared to give to animal suffering and death in the pursuit of human goods and interests. Very few, I would have thought, would give animal suffering no weight and similarly, very few would give animal suffering more weight than human suffering.

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