THE CASE FOR AN ETHICS RESEARCH CONSORTIUM FOR EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF STEM CELL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Emerging technologies have gained notoriety as a catalyst of socioeconomic progress, but have also inspired a revolution in ethics. Here, we provide an overview of ethics in stem cell-based therapies and offer a compelling argument for a need to establish an Ethics Research Consortium that will be tasked to assemble an interdisciplinary panel of experts who will apply ethical principles to analyze the social merit relative to the economic incentives of this emerging technology. Milestone studies on cell therapy in Parkinson's disease and stroke over the last two decades were the focus of this commentary. The major criterion for study selection was based on public opinion, scientific discussion, and government reactions generated by these pioneering studies. Original data from the selected studies are presented. Interpretation and discussion of data captured the prevailing views of the public and scientific community, as well as the government regulatory and oversight decisions (i.e., ban on embryonic stem cell research funding). Lessons learned from two decades of cell-based therapies indicate that poor management of the public discourse of ethics concerning emerging technologies might have contributed to misperceptions within both the public and the research community that have hindered the progress of scientific innovation and even delayed the clinical application of potentially life-saving treatments to critically ill patients. We propose the creation of a Consortium that will evaluate how these novel ethical issues in emerging technologies are addressed under current oversight and regulatory structures and where there may be gaps and need for revised or new public policy approaches.