Welcome to Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics
 

Overview                                     Participants                         Products

 
A Project of the Program in Cell Engineering, Ethics, and Public Policy (PCEEPP), Johns Hopkins University

 

Supported by a grant from the Greenwall Foundation

 

The potential of stem cells and related cell-based therapies to treat disease and injury in humans has generated great excitement in the scientific community as well as among patients and their advocates.  At the same time, ethical and political debates about the use of human embryos in medical research have captured the public’s attention.  There is considerable disagreement about the importance of embryonic sources of stem cells to the advancement of cell science, and there is no agreement as to whether the anticipated benefits justify either the destruction of existing embryos or the creation of embryos for purposes of research.

 

This debate, however energetic, does not exhaust the moral questions that need to be considered in policymaking about stem cell research.  It is essential to engage in serious discussions about the next generation of ethical and policy issues in stem cell research on an ongoing basis, while research advances, rather than to react to scientific developments after they occur. 

 

As an interdisciplinary group comprised of leaders in the fields of stem cell biology, ethics, law, population genetics, and transplantation immunology, supplemented by a core group of scientists and scholars from PCEEPP, we considered the following question - does the transition in stem cell research from the laboratory to first human trials and, ultimately, to human therapies raise any particular ethical and policy issues that are either unique to the stem cell context or of heightened concern?  We answered this question by focusing first on considerations of safety and secondly on considerations of justice. 

 

The Working Group met for two plenary sessions, on September 4, 2002 and January 17, 2003.  Through the plenary sessions and through a variety of smaller meetings, including one-on-one discussions, the Working Group has engaged in in-depth exploration of relevant topics such as immunologic rejection, human leukocyte antigen (HLA) matching in transplantation, conceptions of race and ethnicity, the feasibility of a stem cell “bank” for therapeutic and/or research use, patents and intellectual property, and justice and access to medical technology, among others.  While there is literature on each of these topics, the Working Group is, to our knowledge, the first interdisciplinary, collaborative body to examine these issues in regards to stem cell research and cell-based therapies in the American context.  The Working Group has authored two reports, one on safety issues in cell-based intervention trials and the other on justice considerations in stem cell research and therapy.  The safety paper was published in the November issue of Fertility and Sterility, and the justice paper will be published in the November/December issue of The Hastings Center Report.

  
  
Non-Hopkins Members
  • Dan W. Brock, Ph.D.  

    Head, Section of Public Policy, Department of Clinical Bioethics, National Institutes of Health;

    Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, Brown University                        

  • Patricia A. King, J.D.             

    Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Medicine, Ethics, and Public Policy, Georgetown University Law Center                          

  • Stephen J. O’Brien, Ph.D.        
    Chief, Laboratory of Genetic Diversity, National Cancer Institute                       
  • David H. Sachs, M.D.     

    Paul S. Russell/Warner-Lambert Professor of Surgery, Harvard University Medical School;

    Director, Transplantation Biology Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital                    

  • Davor Solter, M.D., Ph.D.       

    Director, Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology, Department of Developmental Biology                        

  • Sonia M. Suter, J.D.      

    Associate Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School                                  

  • Catherine M. Verfaillie, M.D.  

    Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology, Oncology, and Transplantation, University of Minnesota; Director, Stem Cell Institute, University of Minnesota             

  • LeRoy B. Walters, Ph.D.    

    Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. Professor of Christian Ethics and Professor of Philosophy, Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University                             

Hopkins Members
  • Dawn Mueller Agnew, Ph.D., cPNP    
    Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, Sinai Hospital; Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins University
  • Alison S. Bateman-House, M.A.     
    Research Program Coordinator, The Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute
  • Hilary Bok, Ph.D.       
    Henry R. Luce Professor of Bioethics and Moral and Political Theory;
    Core Faculty, The Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute and Department of Philosophy
  • Aravinda Chakravarti, Ph.D.

    Henry J. Knott Professor and Director, McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine;

    Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics, and Molecular Biology and Genetics  

  • Liza Dawson, Ph.D.    
    Faculty Associate, The Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute                           
  • Ruth R. Faden, Ph.D., M.P.H. 
    Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics;
    Executive Director, The Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute
  • John D. Gearhart, Ph.D.     
    C. Michael Armstrong Professor of Medicine; Director; Division of Developmental Genetics
  • Senayt Getachew     
    Administrative Assistant, The Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute                                            
  • Mark Greene, Ph.D., M.Litt       
    Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics and Health Policy, Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities                   
  • Kathryn E. Schill, M.A.        
    Research Program Coordinator, The Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute
  • Andrew Siegel, Ph.D., J.D.   
    Assistant Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine;
    Associate Director of Academic Programs, The Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute           

 



  
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