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Research and Markets: Renewing the Stuff of Life Stem Cells Ethics and Public Policy is Both a Primer and a Means By Which to Understand the Implications of This Complex Subject

Posted on: Monday, 28 January 2008, 06:00 CST

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c80833) has announced the addition of "Renewing the Stuff of Life : Stem Cells, Ethics, and Public Policy" to their offering.

Stem cell therapy is ushering in a new era of medicine in which we will be able to repair human organs and tissue at their most fundamental level- that of the cell. The power of stem cells to regenerate cells of specific types, such as heart, liver, and muscle, is unique and extraordinary.

In 1998 researchers learned how to isolate and culture embryonic stem cells, which are only obtainable through the destruction of human embryos. An ethical debate has raged since then about the ethics of this research, usually pitting pro-life advocates vs. those who see the great promise of curing some of humanity's most persistent diseases.

In this book Cynthia Cohen agrees that we need to work toward a consensus on the issue of how we treat the embryo. But more broadly she claims that we need to transform and expand the ethical and policy debates on stem cells (adult and embryonic). This important and much-needed book is both a primer and a means by which to understand the implications of this research. Cohen starts by introducing readers to the basic science of stem cell research, and the core ethical questions surrounding the embryo. She then expands the scope of the debate, looking at the moral questions that will crop up down the line, such as e.g. the use of therapeutic cloning to overcome the body's immune resistance to stem cells; the ethics of using animals to test stem cells; how to disentangle federal and state legal and regulatory policies in pursuit of a coherent national policy; and how to develop an ethics of stem cell research that will accommodate new techniques and controversies that we cannot even foresee now. Her final chapter develops a concrete plan for an oversight system for this research.

This is the first single-author book that addresses the many broad ethical and legal issues related to stem cells, and it should be of great interest to bioethicists, researchers, clinicians, philosophers, theologians, lawyers, policy makers, and general readers.

Contents:

Introduction

1. What Are Stem Cells? How Do They Function? What Might They Do? 2. The Search for New Sources of Pluripotent Stem Cells 3. The Moral Significance of Early Human Embryos in Secular Thought 4. The Moral Significance of Early Human Embryos in Religious Thought 5. Creating Human-Nonhuman Chimeras in Stem Cell Research 6. International Stem Cell Research and Research Cloning: Three Contrasting Approaches 7. The Development of National Policy on Stem Cell Research in the United States 8. In Pursuit of National Review and Oversight of Stem Cell Research in the United States

Appendix A. NIH Guidelines for Funding of Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Research, August 25, 2000

Appendix B. Speech by President George W. Bush regarding Human Stem Cell Research, August 9, 2001

Appendix C. Withdrawal of NIH Guidelines for Research Using Human Pluripotent Stem Cells, November 2, 2001

Appendix D. NIH Criteria for Federal Funding of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells, November 7, 2001

Appendix E. President George W. Bush's Veto of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005, July 2006

Notes Glossary Index

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c80833

Source: Oxford University Press

Source: Business Wire

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