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Monitoring Stem Cell Research 
on stem cell research. This is not to say that the sort of traditional 
analysis that has framed much of the debate on stem cells, analysis 
that involves issues of embryo status, autonomy, and informed 
consent, for example, is unhelpful; far from it. Nevertheless, 
traditional moral analysis of stem cell research is nicely 
complemented by a consideration of the "big picture” questions that 
Lewis and Wolfe both wish to press. This report will therefore seek 
to draw attention to the hterature on stem cell research that attends 
both to the narrow and to the expansive bioethical issues raised by 
this research. 
The Moral Status of the Embryo 
There is little doubt that public reflection on stem cell research 
in the United States has been affected by the extraordinarily volatile 
cross-currents of the abortion debate. Although I will indicate below 
several reasons why framing the stem cell debate as a subset of that 
on abortion is problematic, nevertheless, in its current form, stem cell 
research is debated in terms dictated by the abortion controversy, 
and that has meant that questions about the status of the embryo 
have been particularly prominent.^ For example, the National 
Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) described the ethical issues 
raised by stem cell research as "principally related to the current 
sources and/or methods of deriving these cells" (NBAC, 1999, 45). A 
policy brief from the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science (AAAS) begins its discussion of the ethical dispute over stem 
cell research by citing the disagreement over the status of the 
embryo as the decisive variable leading to fundamentally different 
views on this research (AAAS, 1999, 11). The National Academy of 
Sciences's report on stem cell research claims that "the most basic 
(ethical) objection to embryonic stem cell research is rooted in the 
fact that such research deprives a human embryo of any further 
potential to develop into a complete human being” (Nationed 
Academy of Sciences, 2002, 44). The Ethics Advisory Board of the 
Geron Corporation lists the moral status question as the first moral 
consideration relevant to deciding the acceptability of stem cell 
research (Geron Corporation Ethics Advisory Board, 1999, 32). The 
list could go on. 
Despite the fact that these statements all insist on the 
importance of the status question, they also recognize that the 
debate about the status of the early embryo is not new and that the 
controversy over stem cell research does not, strictly speaking, raise 
novel issues in this regard. Indeed, it is probably best to place the 
initial skirmishes over stem cell research in the context of moral 
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