What Stem Cell Researchers Talk About When They Talk About Ethics

This year marks an anniversary that in all probability flew under your radar: The iPSC is 10-years-old.

Great! you say. What’s that, some sort of mobile fantasy sports league?

Nooo. Would you guess induced pluripotent stem cells? They’re the product of a revolution in stem cell research that helped stem the controversy that was roiling the entire field.

Prior to the development of iPSCs, stem cells were derived primarily from eggs fertilized in clinics in vitro that were donated for research purposes. To some, such as President George W. Bush, this was tantamount to abortion. In 2001 he banned federal funding for research on newly created human embryonic stem cell lines. (President Barack Obama lifted that ban in 2009.)

But iPSCs are normal cells, such as skin or blood cells, which have been tinkered with and reprogrammed to revert to an embryonic-like state. They are then capable of reproducing as stem cells or developing into other types of human cells (pluripotent), such as liver, heart, pancreatic or nerve cells.

So the ability to derive a stem cell without using human embryonic tissue changed the debate about stem cell...