CIENCIASMEDICASNEWS: New stem cell research guidelines

domingo, 15 de mayo de 2016

New stem cell research guidelines

New stem cell research guidelines

by Xavier Symons | 14 May 2016 |

In response to the rapid development of scientific research and mounting ethical concerns, The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) has released updated guidelines for stem cell research and the development of new clinical therapies.

The new guidelines deal with a number of issues unaddressed in previous ISSCR documents, including genetic experimentation on human embryos, embryo research oversight processes, and the use of “undue financial inducement” to entice women to donate their eggs for research pruposes.

The full ISSCR document can be found here, and summary here.

“The field of stem cell research is growing at a rapid pace, with scientists and physicians developing new therapies that can help patients around the world who suffer from a wide variety of conditions,” said Sean J. Morrison, Ph.D., ISSCR president and director of the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern. “These guidelines are essential to protect the integrity of the research and to assure that stem cell treatments are safe and effective,” he said.

Writing in Nature, a group of several international of bioethicists commended the ISSCR for the broad-reaching new guidelines.

“The ISSCR guidelines continue the tradition of scientists creating professional standards for the responsible conduct of research. They speak most directly to those engaged in stem-cell research but are also relevant to regulators, journal editors, press officers, physicians, funding bodies and patients. Such a global effort to establish research standards offers a model for other contentious research arenas — from artificial intelligence to climate engineering.”

- See more at: http://www.bioedge.org/bioethics/new-stem-cell-research-guidelines/11876#sthash.ABHS4MNZ.dpuf

The Global Priorities Project and the Future of Humanity Institute, both based at Oxford University, recently produced a Global Catastrophic Risk 2016 report. It’s less gripping than the Left Behind novels about the Second Coming of Christ (with titles like The Rapture: In the Twinkling of an Eye/Countdown to the Earth's Last Days), but, in its own dry, detached way, no less scary.

According to the Oxford experts’ calculations, extinction of the whole human race is reasonably likely. Scientists have suggested that the risk is 0.1% per year, and perhaps as much as 0.2%. While this may not seem worthwhile worrying about, these figures actually imply, says the report, that “an individual would be more than five times as likely to die in an extinction event than a car crash”.

What sort of calamities are we talking about? Collision with an asteroid, the eruption of a super-volcano, extreme climate change, a bio-engineered pandemic, or even a super-intelligent computer declaring war on wetware humanity.

Tiny probabilities add up, so that the chance of extinction in the next century is 9.5% -- which is worth worrying about. And of course, a mere global catastrophe, involving the death of a tenth of the population, is far more likely. That is a very startling statistic.

However, even at Oxford they make mistakes. Within days of issuing the Global Catastrophic Risk 2016 report, the experts were eating humble pie. A mathematician reviewed its calculations and concluded that “the Future of Humanity Institute seems very confused re: the future of humanity”. The authors had to give more nuance and context to their most startling statistic. It doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the ethics of existential risk.