STRIKING THE RIGHT BLOW FOR SCIENCE?

Recently, there has been much debate about USA’s president Barack Obama’s revising of the policy of funding denial on stem cell research. In 2001, the previous administration under Mr George W. Bush had cut off federal grants for the research of stem cells, which has led to the development of technology in this field to be seriously hindered. Now, the new law set will restore to the scientists in this field the federal grants cut off originally and allow the human knowledge on stem cells to advance as it had been in the past. At this rate, scientists may soon be able to find treatments or even cures for regenerative and auto immune diseases and irreversible neurological conditions. I personally agree with this decision made by USA’s administration, but I still feel that we must ensure that there is no violation of ethics in the research papers published.

Firstly, stem cell research is crucial to the biomedical industry. Stem cell research has, since its start, played an important role in expanding the human knowledge and developing new methods that will eventually save many lives in the future. For example, stem cells have been found out to be able to cure certain illnesses or damage to the body. This is because stem cells can be differentiated into almost any type of tissue in the human body so by introducing them to the target area of the body, they will be able to replace damaged cells and save the person. The advancement of the depth of knowledge of humans for the benefit of mankind should not be stopped. To do so would be the equivalent to letting people with the possibility of being cured to be left alone to fight the disease for themselves. As such, to stop the progress of stem cell research would be immoral as this would be giving up the potential of saving many lives and yielding large amount of benefits for the human race through this research.

Secondly, science, religion and politics are three different concepts altogether and should not be brought together. However, in the case of USA’s former president Mr Bush, he had made use of religion to go against science for politics. Mr Bush’s route to political success was through cultivating the religious rights. His motive in not supporting stem cell research was to gain the support of mainly Christians, who feel that embryos are also considered life, so taking the stem cells from them and at the same time killing them is immoral. He was making use of the fact that people are destroying embryos in the process of conducting research on stem cells to invoke the emotions of the general population in order to gain political support, which is both wrong and comical at the same time.

Therefore, stem cell research should be continued. However, we must remember that we must still practise ethics during the research. Some scientists pass of others’ work as their own, or manipulating their research results to support their desired conclusion to their benefit. This embarrasses the entire scientific community and at the same time makes a mockery of research conducted in the relevant field. For example, in the high-profile case involving the South Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk, he was discovered to have faked his results for his research into stem cells. Although he had done so because of the immense pressure to produce fruitful results, he has gone from a national hero to a disgrace to society. This has also brought down the name of the people involved in stem cell research. Therefore, there is a need to keep the number of unscrupulous and unethical scientists down to a minimum.

In conclusion, Mr Obama decision to restore the USA federal grants to the scientist conducting stem cell research was a good move to prevent any more valuable time lost during Mr Bush’s term when research on stem cells came to a standstill because funding was cut off. Research in this area is very important as it could possibly save many millions of lives in the future. However, we must not completely disregard ethics in this area of research. Doing so would only result in the mockery of the research and goes to show that the research has failed, so we still need to exert some form of control on the scientific community to ensure that ethics is not violated. Therefore, we should still continue with stem cell research but at the same time, we must not disregard ethics.