As reported in CNN health.com stem cells may actually put an end to the use of animals especially in the use of testing for pharmaceutical companies.
This relates to several of our discussions into the topic of the ethics around animal testing and the reasons why we need to use them. This article presents another approach to the issue, a very viable option.
This article does not go into great enough detail into how this will work and the process by which the stem cells will be used in the research. One of the things it fails to discuss is the reality that we need to use animals for certain experiments that use different parts of the animals anatomy. This article talks a great deal about the pharmaceutical companies and the impact it will have on the testing that could be done and some of the implications.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/12/22/stem.cell.drug.tests/index.html
The ethics of animal testing has often been debated, and these new developments may decrease the need for it, but the harvesting and use of embryonic stem cells brings up another point of ethical/moral debate, which this article fails to address.
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