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Moral questions

Imagine…

…a world free of many terrible diseases.
…a world where suffering and pain could be greatly reduced - even eradicated.
…a new medical era based on made-to-measure DNA that ends tissue rejection.
…the regeneration of new organs.

Stem cell technologies promise much - but at what cost?

Who will really benefit and what about the embryos needed to take this research further?
Is this future worth the embryos it needs to get there?
Where does a human being begin — at conception, at 14 days, at three months, at birth?
What rights does an embryo have and is any medicine worth the destruction of something as precious as a human life?

What are your hopes for and fears about this new science?

These are the hopes and fears expressed by a group of poets and prose writers in Newcastle upon Tyne who met over a period of weeks to discuss and write creative responses to stem cells, research and ethics

Our stem cell hopes

Support stem cell research: two heads are better than one
  • The eradication of faulty genes
  • Stem cell research may lead to the remaining 10% of questions about life being answered. Or it could help us to ask the right questions and lead to a new understanding of things. Perhaps it could answer that elusive and interchangeable question "Why/how are we here?"
  • The possibility of finding ways to improve things for existing humans and future humans with severe illness and diseases
    - growing organs - could we end up living forever?
    - finding cures and medicines
    - the potential for human regrowth so that like some creatures (e.g lizards and their tails) we can regenerate parts of ourself
  • The discovery or uncovering of something that's been here all along, and the implications of this in many areas of life
  • My grandchildren may live to be 200 years old!
  • The thought that "nature will out" no matter what we (as in, the scientists, of course) do

Our stem cell fears

Redesign last night's fuck
  • Capitalism. Who'll own and abuse all the patents? The scientists don't worry me that much, but the bankers and politicians do.
  • Would we need children if we were immortal?
  • The misuse and abuse of animals
  • That it will turn out to be a red-herring to be chased after, with huge resources thrown after it, but offering no real answers to the needs of the people who turn to it with hopeful expectation
  • Potential for unethical uses in the wrong hands
  • Scientists and technologists forgetting that they are working with "human" material and the possibility for charlatans and money-makers to turn things away from benefit for humankind to enslavement
  • All new research needs Ethical Committee approval - no matter how controversial or potentially damaging