Ethics pertaining to the use of aborted human tissues for research and therapeutic purposes
Sanjukta Bhattacharya
Jadavpore University, India
: J Diagnos Tech Biomed Anal
Abstract
With recent advancements in the field of medical science, tissue engineering, organ transplantation, human embryonic stem cell research and aborted fetal tissue transplants are becoming an attractive source for new scientific exploration and innovation in the field of medicine and healthcare. Human tissues can be used for transplantation studies and therapeutics as well as for in vitro purposes in understanding the simple and basic biology of different ailments as well as in the search for a better cure. However, like any other drug therapy or drug discovery process, tissue experimentation generates intensive debate in terms of ethics and law. Whether it is moral or immoral to use different aborted materials like embryonic stem cells from the inner cell mass or fetal tissues are discussed in this chapter, as these are the two primary materials that are obtained from aborted fetuses and are currently intense topics of discussion regarding their ethical use for experimental and therapeutic purposes.
Biography
Sanjukta Bhattacharya, currently retired, was a Professor of International Relations at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, for over 25 years till June 2016. Prior to that, she taught at Gargi College, Delhi University, and in Delhi University (American History) for 10 years. She has a Master’s degree in History from Delhi University and a Ph.D. from Jawaharlal Nehru University in International Relations, New Delhi (specialization in American Studies). She has received the prestigious Fulbright Award twice (1987-88 and 2004), the first time to do post-doctoral work on a comparison between affirmative action programmes in the US and the reservation system in India, and the second time as a Visiting Scholar, based in Texas College, Tyler, a historically Black college. She has four books to her credit (Deferred Hopes: Blacks in Contemporary America; Perspectives on India’s Northeast, edited; India at the Turn of the Century, edited; The Asian Problematique in the Twenty-first Century, edited), as well as over sixty articles and chapters in international and national journals and edited volumes, some of these being invited chapters etc from publishers like Routledge and Pearson. She has also presented over a hundred papers at national and international conferences. She has supervised over 10 Ph.D. theses, and many more M.Phil. theses. She has published extensively in medical books published by Springer International on medical ethics, bioethics and related issues along with Prof. Philip Stubblefield, Emeritus Professor, Universities of Boston and Harvard, and Prof Niranjan Bhattacharya, Chair Professor, Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine, India. She has also presented invited papers on bioethics at World Congress, Ob/Gyn, Valencia, Spain, 2018, and International Conference on Ethical Issues at Rome, Italy, 2018, and also at International Conference on Ethical Issues at Trivandrum, India, 2018, only to name a few. Curently, she is a member of the Academic Councils, Board of Studies, and Doctoral Committees of various Grade I universities of the country as well as an examiner of Ph.D. theses of many other universities.
E-mail: sanjuktabhattacharya@yahoo.com
