Ethical Issues Associated with Pluripotent Stem Cells

The announcement in February 1997 by researchers at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland of the successful cloning of a sheep named Dolly from adult mammary cells surprised the scientific community and captured the public’s attention, provoking hopeful comments from political leaders, religious figures, and eminent scientists about potential benefits, as well as expressions of fears that it could lead to profound ethical transgressions. The media instantly extrapolated from the creation of a lamb to the potential cloning of humans—one of the first newspaper headlines was “Sheep Clone Raises Alarm Over Humans” (1)—and governments scrambled to develop policies to address public concerns. The initial outcry over the potential use of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) to clone humans was followed by a broader debate about the ethics of the new avenues of medical research that had been opened by new technology, especially the potential to create human embryos that could be used in research and/or therapies.