Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Bioethics- Definition of Human and Stems Cells

A very interesting bioethics discussion. A few questions put forth by the discussion- As we harvest the organs from clinically dead patients (irreversible cell arrest) for the benefit of others, can the same be applied to clinically dead embryos? If an embryo has irreversible cell arrest and will not differentiate further is it ethnically alright to harvest? Also, is an embryo consider an embryo/human if scientists conduct a nuclear transfer into an empty egg which is program not to differentiate into a human (actually happens in natural births-never has turned into a human but often results in runaway cancer in the woman)? Would it be alright to harvest stem cells from these embryonic entities since they lack the potential to form into an embryo?

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