An ethical framework for stem cell research in the European Union

The European Union is a nightmare from the perspective of the ethics and regulation of science. A hitherto insoluble problem has been the task of drafting ethical principles which do not founder on the radically different attitudes taken to the question of the moral status of the human embryo. Following the conclusions reached in an international project, EUROSTEM, we suggest that this problem can be solved by concentration on the scope of principles and we emphasize that European research should be funded in a way that does not discriminate between individual states and researchers in the EU. Finally, we observe that the availability of any eventual embryonic stem cell therapies will pose a dilemma for those countries and those people that have declared stem cell research to be unacceptable.