Research ethics and stem cells Is it time to re-think current approaches to oversight?

Few areas of scientific inquiry have received the amount of attention from politicians, the media and the ethics community that research involving human stem cells has received. A large part of this attention, particularly in the early days of the field, was focused as much on the controversial nature of the research as on its scientific promise. The primary cause of controversy remains the use and destruction of human embryos to derive stem cells or create human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines, which is considered by some constituencies to be morally problematic. A common policy response to these issues has been to subject stem cell research to heightened or additional ethics reviews and oversights. Internationally, many jurisdictions have established specific legislation, ethical guidelines and oversight bodies to govern stem cell and related embryo research (Box 1). ### Box 1: Some jurisdictions with heightened ethics review process for stem cell research CANADA UNITED STATES