Ethics of the biomedical research: virtue over the profit

Reflections about therapeutic cloning

Abstract

The ethical reflection on the biomedical research should set a well defined context: on one side, the acceptance of the inevitable involvements of human subjects; from the other, the recognition of the unusual preciousness of the subject study and, accordingly, the ethical attitude of respect and responsibility form the researcher. On this base, the search should proceed according to an inseparable binomial that it put on an egalitarian step the qualitative and quantitative growth in the knowledge of the man and the purpose of such progress to the service of the himself man. The bidimensional finality confers to the search a virtuous dimension that transcends the mechanic character of the experimental method.

The recent debate on the therapeutic cloning finalised to the productions of stem cells has focused mainly on the results that we hope to reach in the next future. In this way, it is left in shade the fundamental matter of the sense of such search qua talis. The predictable weakness of the arguments pro cloning seems to be also a consequence of such unforgivable omission.