Ethics and Stem Cell Therapeutics for Cardiovascular Disease

As research on stem cell therapeutics for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases in adults is being planned and conducted it is essential to address the ethical issues associated with it. The considerable attention that is currently focused on the ethical issues associated with stem cell research as well as the acute clinical situations sometimes encountered when treating cardiovascular disease, underscore the need for explicit attention to the ethical aspects of this research. In this article, I survey some of the key ethical considerations regarding research involving stem cell therapeutics for cardiovascular diseases including: (1) the standard ethical considerations for translational and clinical research and mechanisms of ethical oversight of them; (2) additional oversight related to stem cell research; (3) considerations for obtaining informed consent for this research and in selecting individual human subjects to participate in it; (4) concerns related to justice that may manifest themselves with respect to which research endeavors move forward and (5) conflicts of interest in research and their potential relationship to research integrity.