5 hours ago Mines. Credit: The District

Human stem cell research holds promise for combating some of the most recalcitrant of diseases and for regenerating damaged bodies. It is also an ethical, legal and political minefield.

Human stem cell research is a thriving field of science worldwide holding promise for treating diseases such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease, as well as for furthering our understanding of how we develop from the very earliest stages of life.

But using human embryonic stem (ES) cells to improve the health of other humans has also been the subject of comment, criticism and even court cases. Time magazine dubbed the "complexity and drama" surrounding these cells as the "Great Debate".

Most notably, the field witnessed the 2001 restriction on funding for ES cell research in the USA by President Bush and the lifting of the ban in 2009 by President Obama. Then in 2011, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) banned the patenting of inventions derived from human eggs or their equivalent on the basis that they were human embryos, the commercial exploitation of which "would be contrary to morality."

While religious bodies and green lobbyists use patent law to elevate the status of the embryo, scientists argue that doing so threatens research that might benefit the health of millions.

International law permits states to refuse patents where necessary to protect morality in their territory. "Yet, how does a patent examiner or a court assess whether an invention is immoral to the point that, unlike other inventions, it can't be patented? That is a particularly difficult question," said Dr Kathy Liddell from the Faculty of Law. "It is a conundrum that runs headlong into the complex intersection of law and morality, intellectual property and philosophy."

It is precisely this intersection that a new research centre in the Faculty will investigate. The new centre funded by the Hatton Trust and the WYNG Foundation will focus on medical law, ethics and policy relating to controversial issues such as patenting inventions involving DNA and body parts, the regulation of medical research and technologies, assisted reproduction and surrogacy, and the governance of 'big data' in the medical field, as well as the regulatory and legislative issues that stem cell research is likely to meet en route from the lab to the clinic.

"These areas need to be considered not as a post hoc rationalisation of events that have already happened, but alongside and ahead of technological advances," said Liddell, who is centrally involved in the new centre, as well as being Deputy Director of the Faculty's Centre for Intellectual Property and Law. "To complement the extraordinary science that is happening, we need to consider the ramifications of biomedical advances in a thorough and timely way."

Liddell's own research interests relate to the pathway that leads from the research bench to clinically effective treatments. She sees the law's role as facilitating and supporting this pathway in morally responsible ways.

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The ethical, legal and political minefield of stem cell research