New Springer book debates the moral status of the human embryo with special regard to stem cell research and therapy.
Stem cell research and the potential use of human embryonic stem cells in clinical therapy is a controversial issue which splits both scientific and public opinion. The current conflict over embryonic stem cells throughout the world deals particularly with the ethical implications of this promising, but delicate subject and the scientific manipulation of human life in its early stages of development. It is a symbolic struggle over the whole future of developmental biology - over how we will proceed with a wide range of research on human development. Alternative methods for gaining embryonic stem cells such as the Altered Nuclear Transfer (ANT) method developed by William B. Hurlbut, M.D., a member of The President's Council on Bioethics in Washington, D.C., are considered important steps torward embryonic stem cell research.
It is in this context that the new Springer book Stem Cells, Human Embryos and Ethics: Interdisciplinary Perspectives provides insight into this recent debate from several relevant fields. A medical and biological angle dealing with new technological possibilties in medical research and putative clinical therapy is presented as well as an ethical point of view including philosophical and theological approaches regarding the moral status of human embryos.
The various chapters of the book focus on one main problem: Is it acceptable from an ethical point of view to use stem cells from human embryos for scientific research and clinical therapy? And what are the weaknesses and strengths of various opinions and positions when they are critically evaluated? Moreover the book discusses several sub-problems strongly related to this topic, i. e. when does any individual human being begin or at what stage development does a human organism become entitled to the moral and legal protection which we give to the life of human adults?