Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy Volume 17 Article 2 Issue 1 Symposium on Bioethics 1-1-2012 Bioethics Today, Bioethics Tomorrow: Stem Cell Research and the Dignitarian Alliance Roger Brownsword Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndjlepp Recommended Citation Roger Brownsword, Bioethics Today, Bioethics Tomorrow: Stem Cell Research and the Dignitarian Alliance, 17 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol'y 15 (2003). Available at: http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndjlepp/vol17/iss1/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy at NDLScholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy by an authorized administrator of NDLScholarship. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ARTICLES BIOETHICS TODAY, BIOETHICS TOMORROW: STEM CELL RESEARCH AND THE "DIGNITARIAN ALLIANCE" ROGER BROWNSWORD* INTRODUCTION If we take bioethics seriously, then we will think that it is right, indeed essential, to ask a question of the following kind: which (if any) of the technologies now being developed in the biosciences and biomedicine can be legitimately put into prac- tice and with what limitations (if any)? We will think it worth debating the ethical credentials of, say, human cloning (repro- ductive and non-reproductive), gene therapy, pre-implantation diagnosis, stem cell research, and so on. Even those who think that there is little prospect of achieving a consensus on such questions, or who think that there is something of an inevitability about the advance of technology that promises to serve some per- ceived human need, will concede some purpose to such ethical reflections.