What are the ethical questions raised by that research?
One of the major arguments involved in stem cell research is that you have a fetus formed and you are taking the cells and very likely destroying the fetus. And then of course we do have some stem cells where the fetus was destroyed a long time ago and President Bush has said that was okay. Basically, the “crime” was committed a long time ago but we have the results of the crime and it’s okay to use those results. And even that is a little controversial. There is a question of ethics in using results from research you regard as immoral. But this issue, I think, even more than the cloning issue, can involve the question of abortion. There are those who regard the fetus as a person with rights, and again, this fetus is unable to give voluntary free, fully informed consent to participate. I think that is really at the heart of the issue. Time magazine recently wrote about Christopher Reeve’s progress in physical therapy since his spinal cord injury seven years ago. A sidebar to that story
