John Harris (bioethicist)

Transcription

What's the right thing to do? What's the appropriate way about going about this? Does this question have any answer? Over the last several years, stem cell research has been associated with a lot of enthusiasm, but it's also been associated with a lot of ethical issues. Recently we've seen a lot attention and a lot of scientific excitement over iPS, or induced pluripotent stem cell research. This is very exciting science. >> You can take a skin cell like a cheek swab or you know medical waste from a procedure and take those cells, give them a little sort of fountain of youth cocktail, and turn them into something that is like embryonic stems cells. That, that can turn into it is pretty potent that can turn into any cell in the human body. Science by its nature moves very quickly and unpredictably and generally out of the public spotlight. So, it's generally not until after the science the initial science has already been produced and published that policy makers or the general public actually hear about it. When President Obama issued his executive order rescinding the Bush administration order he directed the National Institutes of Health to develop guidelines for federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research. And it's dramatically increased the amount of stem-cell research that's actually funded here in the US. So the National Academy's guidelines, which were the first set of guidelines out there at all in the United States for governing stem-cell research, arose out of the interest of scientists who understood very clearly that this was a, a socially controversial area of science. And in the absence of any federal regulation, went to the National Academies and said, please develop guidance, develop a, a system under which we can operate so that we are accountable and so that we prevent, you know, bad outcomes. [MUSIC] Scientists go into science to do science not to do law, so we developed a project, or looking at international collaboration in stem cell research in the context of this highly varied landscape of, of policies governing stem cell research. And this turned out to be the beginning of what we now call the Hinxton group. Which is an international consortium of scientists, ethicists, policy makers, lawyers, philosophers who are interested in as I said before, fostering ethically and scientifically defensible research. >> Some of the most heated ethical controversies related to embryonic stem cell research have related to the fact that embryos need to be destroyed in order to create embryonic stem cell lines. Professional groups were coming into the picture saying, we know that there are ethical issues involved. We know that there are different laws locally, nationally and internationally, and they wanted to provide scientists with a way of negotiating among these different laws and, and ethical norms. Under the National Academy of Sciences, this is known as an escrow, nothing to do with the mortgage crisis. But the Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee for the ISSCR, the International Society of Stem Cell Research, they recommend a SCROC. A Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee because they took on a larger task of not just looking at the ethical issues with embryonic stem cell research, but those of all sorts of stem cells. At Hopkins, we obviously took notice of these major national and international guidelines, assembled a committee of people from across the university, given that we do a considerable amount of stem cell research and made a decision to proceed with establishing an SCROC here at Johns Hopkins. We constructed a multidisciplinary committee that includes scientists, includes ethicists, attorneys and non institutional members so we have relevant expertise in the room to consider the range of issues that are associated with stem cell research. If a scientist at John Hopkins wants to do research involving human embryonic stem cells, either research directed at deriving new human embryonic stem cell lines or doing laboratory work involving existing human embryonic stem cell lines, then she or he has to come to the SCROC for approval for that research. >> What bioethicist and, and folks like myself who are scientists, who are doing work in ethics and policy try to do is, to get ahead of that curve a bit. So to try to forecast, by speaking with scientists and working with scientists, try to identify what are those issues that are coming down the pike scientifically, that are gonna be of interest and potentially of concern to the general public and to policymakers. And to try to be proactive about developing guidance for how policymakers and the public might regard or regulate or oversee emerging technologies. >> Being in the field of bioethics is fantastic. You get to take the hardest questions, the things that people talk about at the dinner table or at a cocktail party and really study them, really try to figure out what's the right thing to do. What's the appropriate way about going about this. Does this question have any answer? [MUSIC].