I found an interesting New York Times article about Shinya Yamanaka, a Japanese scientist featured in the Sleeboom article for his discovery of Induced pluripotent stem cells, which are the equivalent of human embryonic stem cells, however, they are created without the use of human embryos. It follows the path of his career as a research scientist and heralds the potential benefits and ethical problems this discovery has solved. The article was published in 2007, when his discovery was receiving a large amount of media attention and its interesting to see how this article illustrates the finding as a way to possibly sidestep ethical issues which Sleeboom cites as reckless.
I found this article very interesting for a few reasons. First, on the surface level, it is a fascinating story about an eccentric personality who struggled to find financial support at the beginning of his career, but ultimately was able to garner this support. In the end, he figured out a way to sidesteps the thorny issue of destroying embryos in stem cell research, which was a humongous breakthrough. On one level, Dr. Yamanaka’s research could contribute immensely to the mitigation of the controversy surrounding stem cell research. By using skin cells to act as stem cells, no embryos need to be destroyed. Since the destruction of embryos for scientific research is one of the biggest arguments against doing stem cell research, Dr. Yamanaka’s findings were significant.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the implication that struck me when reading this article is that by sidestepping the controversy surrounding stem cell research, Dr. Yamanaka’s findings represent merely a loophole around a huge controversial issue and not a solution. I’m sure that there are still kinks that need to be worked out in the implementation of using skin cells to act as stem cells, but there are still other moral issues surrounding this field. Scientific advancements can help in sidestepping moral conflict, but especially in a field like stem cell research, these moral conflicts will not disappear entirely. We have not answered the question of whether or not it is moral to destroy embryos to conduct scientific research that could ultimately save many more lives, and there are still other questions out there that we may not be able to sidestep.
The other point that I wanted to bring up was that there is a significant portion of this article dedicated to how Dr. Yamanaka’s research “is being hailed in his native Japan for an additional reason: as a sign that the country may finally be coming of age as a center of scientific research.” In our reading for this past week about stem cell research in Japan, this conflict between Japanese cultural ideals and scientific advancement in Japan were at odds. In this article, it seems like scientific advancement will “win out,” but I would also expect there to be many public debates and controversial discussions about the issue, which is not exactly what mainstream Japanese culture has prioritized in the past.