No Fountain of Youth
David A. Prentice
October 1, 2000
Imagine a world in which auto repair is society's greatest challenge. Because of the vital nature of their work, auto mechanics are both funded and regulated by a government agency, the National Institutes of Auto Health (NIAH). The NIAH, which seeks both to promote effective auto repair and to articulate the ethical limits to its practice, has been ordered by Congress to crack down on the use of parts from stolen cars. But, reflecting its own contradictory mission, the NIAH has come up with a regulation that is either-depending on your point of view-Solomonic or sophistic. Mechanics cannot steal cars in order to use their parts, the NIAH decrees. But if someone offers a mechanic parts from a stolen car, the mechanic is encouraged to buy them freely.
You probably imagine that this ethical gerrymandering is driven by a tremendous shortage of spare parts. But you are wrong-in fact, the auto makers are rapidly increasing their capacity to manufacture brand-new, legitimate spare parts, and would do so more quickly if their market were not being undercut by the gray market that the NIAH implicitly endorses. It is, all in all, a bizarre and dysfunctional system, and it's not hard to imagine a controversy arising over the NIAH's policy. If only the controversy were just about cars. In fact, it's about human beings.
In our real world, where repairing people is far more important and difficult than repairing cars, there are few more promising avenues for medical research than stem cells. These special types of cells provide the human body with the ability to grow its own spare parts. Our bone marrow, for example, contains blood stem cells, which continually replenish the red and white cells and platelets in our bloodstream. Other kinds ...
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