Stumbling on status: abortion, stem cells, and faulty reasoning.

Common arguments from the abortion debate have set the stage for the debate on stem cell research. Unfortunately, those arguments demonstrate flawed reasoning-jumping to unfounded conclusions, using value laden language rather than careful argument, and ignoring morally relevant aspects of the situation. The influence of flawed abortion arguments on the stem cell debate results in failures of moral reasoning and in lack of attention to important morally relevant differences between abortion and human embryonic stem cells.

Response to Frederic Bretzner et al. "Target populations for first-in-human embryonic stem cell research in spinal cord injury".

We address concerns raised in this issue by Bretzner et al. (2011) by explaining the rationale for including subjects with subacute, neurologically complete spinal cord injuries in the Phase 1 trial of GRNOPC1. We also present elements of the informed consent process that minimize the likelihood of therapeutic misconception.