Now, whether it is searching for the word " stem cell " on the Internet or in normal interactions, we deeply feel that stem cells are no longer as mysterious and high as before, and have begun to gradually enter the public's vision and life.
But people are easily attracted by some breakthrough discoveries of "stem cells", especially when it involves life-saving treatment, including "stem cells conquer AIDS ", "stem cells make Schumacher wake up" and other news.
At the same time, "stem cell ethics" is also a hot topic.
Different views on embryos and life
Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) have caused huge controversy in Western countries . The important reason is that studying it means that human embryos need to be destroyed.
Embryonic stem cell problem is usually associated with abortion problem, and the core here is when human life begins.
Some people believe that the embryo is a person with the same moral status as an adult or live-born child. As a question of religious beliefs and moral beliefs, they believe that "human life begins with conception", so the embryo is a person. According to this view, embryos have interests and rights and must be respected. From this perspective, taking blastocyst and removing inner cell mass to derivate embryonic stem cell lines is tantamount to murder.
There are also many people who have different views on the moral status of embryos. They believe that babies can become people in the substantial sense after childbirth.
Special In May 2019, the Alabama State Legislature passed the "strictest" anti-abortion bill in history. The bill's prohibition on abortion is unprecedented in forty years. Conservative states such as Georgia , Mississippi have also passed bills to restrict abortions [1].
You can imagine that even abortion is not allowed. Using embryonic stem cell for research has become a "thorn in the eyes" for some people in the United States!
In this regard, Chinese people do not believe that human embryos are sacred from the moment they are conception, so most Chinese people do not think that human embryos are equivalent to people of complete meaning. In fact, this can be proved by the number of artificial termination of pregnancy in the past year.
Chinese people also respect embryos. They believe that early embryos are some kind of living creatures, but they are relatively tolerant. Especially in the case of human interests such as treating diseases, Chinese people support the study of human embryos and embryonic stem cells.
uses "embryo stem cells" as the keyword to search in China's largest newspaper database. From 2000 to 2019, there were 1087 related reports, and only 11.2% of the reports involved ethical issues related to hESCs .
From this point of view, ethical issues related to stem cell research are not the focus of Chinese media, and the destruction or use of human embryos for stem cell research did not arouse strong opposition.
For Western countries, a landmark discovery in 2006, Adult cells can induce into pluripotent stem cells has greatly changed the debate surrounding stem cell use.
Therefore, the current ethical controversy about stem cells is more common in the stem cell transformation application link .
New technology, new problems
In the past, the application of Chinese herbal medicine was all based on human experience, which is the so-called Shennong tasting hundreds of herbs.
Then, in the last century, the development of chemical drugs and biological agents, the same period developed clinical research procedures, especially the fourth phase clinical research has become a hard threshold for the market launch of drugs.
The development of stem cells was different from traditional drugs at the beginning, such as the development of hematopoietic stem cells, which took the medical technology route in China, which is somewhat similar to organ transplantation.
Until now, there is still a dispute over whether stem cells are technology or drugs in various countries around the world.
Even though we implement strict marketing routes for stem cell drugs like some European and American countries, in fact, there are still a large number of stem cell hospitals and clinics. For example, there are more than 2,000 stem cell clinics in the United States, and the same situation occurs in Japan and South Korea.
In the eyes of some people in Western countries, this is simply attributed to "unstrictly tested stem cell therapy."
But for every patient who is eager to find a cure, stem cells have really helped some patients (even terminally ill patients) to recover.
At this time, ethical disputes inevitably arise. There is no clear answer to this question
.
Take doctors as an example. On the one hand, clinicians have the responsibility to do their best to improve people's quality of life. For some doctors, using cutting-edge but untested stem cell therapy (provided to be safe) is the only way to provide treatment and hope for people with other incurable diseases. After all, some lives are at stake and cannot continue to wait for years.
On the other hand, doctors are asked not to harm their patients, but using untested therapies may have unexpected negative effects on the health of patients . Even if the possibility is small, it undoubtedly poses certain harm to the doctor's career.
Therefore, in reality, we can see that the doctor group usually applies stem cells of reliable sources to themselves or friends and relatives, while for strange patients, stem cells are usually not recommended, which is also a helpless choice for reality.
This ethical consideration is much smaller for patients, choosing between treatment-free death and an undertested treatment, many patients are willing to try these treatments, although there may be risks.
further debate beyond doctors and patients
When we look at stem cell ethics, there are still some places where answers cannot be obtained.
One, although the claims of providing stem cell therapy is altruistically motivated, these therapies can be quite expensive and we cannot rule out that profit factors may also be a factor in some doctors and companies providing stem cells.
charges a large amount of unproven treatment fees to those who are desperate in the disease, which must involve a moral dilemma. However, as always, it is a difficult line to draw.
A doctor charges patients indiscriminately for their own benefit, obviously violates the doctor's moral standards, but if treatment is really that expensive (in fact, stem cell preparation is indeed not cheap), this may be reasonable.
Some also believe that a slight excess charge can allow additional funds to fund further research or to fund treatment for people who cannot afford the full cost - this is inevitable for the development of emerging technologies, but this may not always be appropriate when the patient's own life is threatened.
Second, if the subject makes informed consent for his or her treatment, should doctors be allowed to use stem cells for health care now? Or is it a responsibility for doctors and scientists to wait until reliable scientific data is available to provide these treatments? But what kind of data is reliable enough?
Third, it is understandable to use stem cell therapy to treat terminally ill patients, but it is used to perform cosmetic or anti-aging . Should stem cell technology application be allowed in response to these situations that do not endanger life or seriously affect the quality of life? In situations where certain national and local policies do not allow, customers choose some countries that are allowed to carry out stem cell therapy. Is there no ethical issues?
and so on, it can be seen that this is undoubtedly a difficult and complex debate, requiring the participation of the public, scientists and policy makers.
No matter what, these conversations need to continue so that can be formulated to develop wise policies to protect patients and promote responsible, ethical research practices.
Reference materials:
1.https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1633646038281158373&wfr=spider&for=pc
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