Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells both solve and create ethical problems, say stem cell researchers in the journal Stem Cells and Development. Maureen L. Condic and Mahendra Rao point out that human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) face a number of ethical and regulatory difficulties which iPS cells do not.

Although many scientists thought that President Obama would effectively deregulate hESC research and allow abundant funding to flow in, this has not happened. Even though he is not opposed to this research, he is hamstrung by public opinion and existing laws Furthermore, work on hESCs in the US is constrained by patents, putting American scientists at a comparative disadvantage with Europeans scientists. However, iPS cells face little opposition and progress on them has been rapid.

“While definitive evidence for clinical-grade, ‘zerofootprint,’ personalized iPSCs that have been produced using clinically approved procedures remains to be obtained, scientists appear well on the path to success and we look forward to reporting on such results in the near future,” say the authors.

Still, as work in iPS cells progresses, it is becoming clearer that it will eventually pose serious ethical problems. Scientists have made rapid progress in creating viable human eggs from iPS cells. This makes it possible to envisage nightmare scenarios. “The ability to produce millions of mature human eggs in the laboratory raises the specter of producing enormous numbers of human embryos for research, or even for industrial purposes. Clearly, the isolation of stem cells from the female germ line prompts the need for renewed debate over the appropriate uses of human eggs in the laboratory and the ethics of generating human embryos solely for the purpose of scientific research.” ~ Stem Cells and Development, Apr 16