[About easy answers].

Abstract

In the last few months all aspects of stem cell research--biomedical, ethical, legal--have been given broad space in the print and electronic media. Biologists, physicians, lawyers and ethicists covered many of the facets and have thus laid a solid foundation of basic information for a very wide public. The political discussions in the context of the new Swiss Federal law governing the use and protection of supernumerary fertilized oocytes in IVF are about to completely and irreversibly change the character of these discussions. Information has been superseded by lobbying for particular interests. Before society has had time to find widely accepted answers to the many questions raised by stem cell research and to come to terms with it, economic pressure groups demand a legal framework in which therapeutic cloning is permitted. At the same time, patents on genes and stem cells are to be introduced to finance research. Together, the two claims shed a new light on stem cell research. Both claims tend to polarize public opinion. Well-known patterns will dominate the communication process and allow both sides to shirk the real issues: what are the broadly accepted ethical answers to the many questions raised by stem cell research? Again scientists will argue for the freedom of research in an economic context on behalf interest groups. Their closeness to interest groups will undermine their own credibility, the credibility of science and the public confidence. It is to be hoped that other scientists will continue to independently argue the case for their research, to talk about it and its problems and to discuss them in an interdisciplinary exchange with their colleagues from other branches of science with a view to a consensus acceptable to a majority of the public. This consensus, even if it has to be reviewed and redefined constantly in the light of new research, will give scientists the inner security needed for their work. Only the dialogue with society can create the necessary understanding for science and thus serve best its interest.