Go Public
Four years have passed and a groundbreaking study by a competing lab in Britain has demonstrated a technique which allows doctors to apparently cure Parkinson's disease in 95% of patients - an unprecedented survival rate for any neurological disease of its magnitude. Each time the therapy is used, stem cells must be extracted from a new human embryo.
The Food and Drug Administration recently approved the therapy based on the strong evidence of its efficacy in British clinical trials, but the 2001 executive order on stem cells is still in effect and therefore federal Medicare dollars will not be used to reimburse this treatment. The expensive therapy is therefore unavailable to many elderly or low-income patients.
A bill to overturn the 2001 presidential executive order and encourage widespread availability of the treatment has passed through congress and awaits a vote in the senate. If it gets to the White House, the president is expected to sign the bill (his father was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's).
Your research in the last several years has been an almost identical approach as the British group, but your results in primates have demonstrated that subjects treated with this therapy might painfully and fatally reject new stem cells about 4 years after the treatment. You feel that the British groupÕs research may not be mature enough to see any adverse effects in the clinical trials, and that humans treated with this therapy will have a chance of rejection similar to your primates.
You have been subpoenaed to testify in front of the senate healthcare committee before the upcoming vote. You must decide to what extent the public needs to know about your primate results.
In a new group (composed of different HW #1 perspective groups), collectively decide on the best way to approach this dilemma.
For starters, consider these questions:
- What are the possible alternative actions you could take?
- What are the consequenses of each of these alternatives?
- What responsibilities do you have as a scientist and citizen?
- If these responsibilities conflict, how do you weight their importance?
- Who's advice will you seek?
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |