Are There Scientific Solutions to the Moral Dilemmas?
Building directly on the dialogue about the moral status of the human embryo as discussed in our July 2004 conference, the Ethics Center organized an intensive, multidisciplinary panel workshop over a day and a half to examine the proposals recently presented to the President’s Council on Bioethics about possible alternative sources of human embryonic stem cells for research. Such alternative stem cell sources might resolve the conflict between the experimental need to use human embryonic stem cells and the concern of many that such experimental use requires the destruction of embryonic human life. The workshop resulted in a provisional consensus statement, and produced a series of ethical questions about these alternative stem cell options, which were then addressed by participants from the community during a luncheon session on June 7th. Each table at the luncheon engaged in moderated discussion of one of these questions, and in a wrap-up session, each table moderator presented the s
