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.?