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Although this cartoon is illustrating that some scientists think that they are bound by restrictions, many feel that stem cells need limitations before society suffers the consequences.

The most important and popular reason for people to argue for more regulation in the stem cell field has to do with the potential for cloning.

Here are some excerpts from an article written by Dr. Arthur Kaplan May 24, 2005, for MSNBC

"It is not clear what rules should govern human cloning for stem cell research. The South Koreans say they had these new human cloning experiments reviewed by local ethics committees, but what rules or principles did such committees use?"

"Making people by cloning them interests only the opponents of stem cell research, nuts, fruit balls and Hollywood film producers. If the prospect of a clone moving to your neighborhood really frightens you then urge the president and his political pals to pass a law forbidding human reproductive cloning. But don’t hold the science hostage. Having no rules at all except "don’t do any cloning for any reason" is neither ethically sensible nor, as the work in South Korea shows, practical. The best way to keep an eye on cloning is to regulate it rather than to hide behind the fig leaf that it has to be banned, lest it be used to make people."

The rest of this article can be seen by clicking this link.

Because stem cells are currently only funded and researched in the private sector, the government doesn't have much of a say in how and for what purpose the research is being conducted. If the government did begin to fund stem cell research, at least limits and regulations could be specified.

What Regulation Does Exist?

Currently, there are several regulations that exist pertaining to stem cell research.

The National Institute of Health (NIH) released guidelines for research on August 24, 2000.

These NIH guidelines prohibit:
    Creation of embryos solely for research purposes. The only embryos approved for use are those that were made for in-vitro fertilization attempts and are not longer needed. Even those may be used only with proper informed consent of the donors.

  • Payment of any kind to the donors. In addition, they cannot know which researcher or scientist will be working with their donated embryos. And no researcher who is affiliated with an infertility clinic may work on embryos collected at that clinic or hospital.

  • Use of federal money to destroy embryos to harvest stem cells. Privately funded researchers would have to do that.

All that anyone can do is speculate, but regulation in the area of stem cell research is a necessity. Without regulation, scientists would have free reign to do whatever they wanted to with the technology, and I think everyone would agree that this is not a chance that we should take. There are certain areas involving stem cells that popular opinion disagrees with, and the only way to prevent such research is by regulation. Just like any new technology, there is a serious possibility that unregulated stem cell research may lead to unethical or immoral procedures.

Society has the potential to be impacted, either positively by medical breakthroughs, or negatively by the misuse and abuse of stem cell technology. Which one do you choose? Regulation in the stem cell field will most likely effect the direction that stem cell technology is moving.