Today there is news that scientists in the US and Japan have successfully created stem cells from regular human skin cells instead of relying on politically and ethically touchy embryos. In doing so they have accomplished a rare feat: they have managed to make everyone happy on all sides of the stem cell issue.

Personally it’s hard to see the ethical problem in using embryos to derive life-saving stem cells, especially if those embryos were destined for a dumpster in the back of a fertility clinic anyway. The “right to lifers” who object seem not to blink an eye at placing more importance on protecting a potential-but-unactualized human being than providing life-saving treatments to actual human beings who are desperately in need. So for me, this new discovery conjures a sigh of relief more than anything, knowing that these revolutionary treatments can now happen unimpeded.

For those on the other side of the issue, though, it must seem like a vindication. And you know what? They’re right, though perhaps not for the reasons they’d prefer.

Whatever anyone thinks of those who opposed embryonic stem cells, they were correct in insisting that we take a step back and ask ethical questions about revolutionary science. In that sense, they were vindicated because they forced the ethical discussion and ultimately the discovery of a stem cell solution that posed no ethical dilemmas to anyone.

The pace of technological change continues to accelerate at an exponential rate, leaving less and less time to ask–and more urgently, answer–fundamental moral questions about the technology we are unleashing.

Here are some examples of questions that must be answered in the next couple of decades, and some of them quite soon:

Some people find our slowness in facing these and other looming ethical questions so alarming that they have urged that we relinquish broad areas of technology lest we face destruction, the most famous example being Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy’s seminal article in Wired magazine named “Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us.”

I think no such thing–the potential benefits of all these technologies vastly outweigh their risks, and in any case it’s impossible to put any technological genie back in its bottle. But it’s imperative that we ask these questions and come about these technologies in a way that is as safe, sane, and ethical as possible.

Score one for people who questioned the ethics of stem-cell technology–not because I agree with your stance about human embryos, but because you encouraged asking the right questions.

Tags: Ethics, stem-cell-research, technology