Stem Cell Research - Should We Agree to Disagree?

I attended Dr. John Gearhart's lecture about stem cell research and cloning on Friday evening. This lecture opened up my eyes to things I have not really thought about before. Gearhart's lecture was about stem cell research and cloning. We can use this to help disabled and people with diseases. I feel that the dilemma of whether or not cloning and stem cell research should occur is an ill- structured problem. The problem solving cycle that I heard unfolding during the lecture reminded me of cycles that we have talked about in class. The problem was first defined in a problem space. The initial problem was whether cloning and stem cell research should be used to help those people in need. Stem cell research would allow doctors and scientists to grow cells that would be compatible with a person's body and then replace their bad cells with those that were grown. Their goal was to make cells that a person's body would not reject. They realized the opportunity to do this with cloning. This is called therapeutic cloning. Each one of the above steps has a set of rules or procedures that need to be implemented. For example, one rule or procedure would be finding a source for the cells. This may be from an adult, or an umbilical cord. Each set of these rules would have sub rules. Say, for an adult source for cells, there are certain rules that need to be followed. For example, the adults' cells grow too slow for this procedure and may fuse with the host's cells.

These steps and procedures continue until a solution to the problem is found. We know that we can come to a conclusion, however, there are several obstacles, and we still aren't sure if we should do this anyway. Some issues that need to be dealt with before they can actually implement their solution, for example, are the ethics behind all of this research, who will fund it, who owns this procedure, etc.?

Looking at this situation from a business perspective, I realize that there needs to be ownership, funding and also sources for cells to make this possible. However, I was kind of annoyed because I feel that when God gives us a talent, we should use it to help others, teach them how to do it, and not worry about having the right to own something. We are all just stewards of what God has given to us, and we need to share. Also, if more people know how to do something, then it should not be as expensive and we would not have to worry about funding as much as they are.

From an ethical perspective, I do not think they should clone entire people. Gerhart spoke about an entirely different ethical dilemma with this. Would the clone have the same soul as the original? He says probably not, but how would we know since we never did this? Also, he spoke about the ethics of opportunity. Instead of looking at the ethical aspects from a perspective of where we should draw the line and what we should not do, we should look at it from the perspective of what we can do and what opportunities we have with our talents.