Stem Cells, Stem Cell Therapy, and Ethical Problems of Medicine

Overview

Common denominator of many philosophic approaches to the problem of using human embryos in medicine is the statement that it is „a full-value human subject that deserves respect as an adult human being“. It has a defined identity in which it starts its own coordinated gradual development. Therefore, it is not just a simple cluster of cells. Integrity or holistic properties of a new quality of cells that, as a whole, represent an early embryo, and in fact are not a cluster of pre-embryonic „structural“ parts or a sum of cells etc. They have theirs own evolution, previously inherently encoded, but not precisely predestined. In other words, only autointegrity alone in evolution, inherence as a part of predetermination in evolution of embryo, is not able to exist as a unit „alone“. Human foetus since the first moments of its existence goes through many qualitative (externally or internally determined) transformations before it becomes a respectable human being. It is possible to say that medicine, as many times before, is now coming to a stage when axiologic values, ethical directives or moral feelings of its subjects and human objects proved in the past, are no more relevant at present. Therefore, medicine has no other alternative than an active approach to study this problem from all philosophical, biological and medical aspects to evolutionize itself in this new dimension. In this paper some of these questions are discussed and some ways of forming the ethics in therapeutic use of stem cells are presented.

Key words:
stem cells, stem cell therapy, embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells, ethics, bioethics.