Monitoring Stem Cell Research 
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of the potential for new treatments and cures, whether or not 
what they have to say is what patients and their loved ones 
want to hear. “It is misleading to suggest that stem cells will 
bring cures,” one writer observes, “particularly cures for pa- 
tients now coping with the serious diseases the research tar- 
gets. 
A related concern, raised by some of the same commenta- 
tors, involves what has been termed “the disproportionate 
emphasis on stem cell research in contemporary health poli- 
tics. The prominence of this debate in American politics, 
they argue, may tend to distract us from the fact that many 
Americans, and even more people elsewhere, lack very basic 
healthcare and have no access to those medical tools and 
techniques that already exist and that raise no profound con- 
troversy. The concern for justice, and for the proper setting 
of priorities, they argue, requires us to see this line of research 
in its proper perspective. Because federal resources for re- 
search are limited, decisions must be made about which areas 
should receive high (and low) priority, and decisions must be 
made about how much to devote to research and how much to 
devote to programs that provide proven health care to pa- 
tients. These commentators suggest that this view does not 
mean that stem cell research should not be funded, but only 
that we must keep in mind that funds are also needed for 
many other approaches to fighting suffering and disease. 
Critics of this view, however, respond that an excessive preoc- 
cupation with existing health care needs can jeopardize new 
medical research and medical progress, and that today’s “ba- 
sic medicine” was once experimental research.^®® 
Meanwhile, others have argued that the debate has been 
too narrow in another way. Any federal policy, they suggest, 
must take note not only of the potential promise of embryonic 
stem cell science, but also possible alternatives to such re- 
search, alternatives less morally troubling to many Americans. 
Many opponents of public funding for human embryonic stem 
cell research, for instance, have argued that more attention 
should be paid, and more resources devoted, to adult stem cell 
research, which raises few of the moral difficulties present in 
the embryonic stem cell debates^®® (though, for some, it still 
does raise a number of ethical difficulties).^®° Such work, they 
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