Ethics
Ethical questions have been raised regarding the blood collection process with special emphasis on any potential discomfort caused to the fetus. Respected scientific investigation has shown that the loss of blood circulation in the dam (mother animal) results in death within seconds of slaughter and that the fetus will be dead within a few minutes of the slaughter of the dam due to oxygen deprivation. In comparison, fetal bovine blood is collected from the bovine fetus only after the pregnant uterus has been removed from the slaughtered cow which, in a typical commercial slaughterhouse, means a delay of around 20 minutes from the time of slaughter. The time between maternal death and the start of fetal blood harvesting is relatively long and therefore means that there is minimal possibility of brain activity in the fetus at the time of blood harvesting and hence minimal possibility of discomfort. Of course, it is important to balance the ethical concerns surrounding the welfare of the donor animal against the highly significant benefits that the use of fetal bovine serum brings to human and animal health.
Read more about this topic: Fetal Bovine Serum
Famous quotes containing the word ethics:
“If you take away ideology, you are left with a case by case ethics which in practise ends up as me first, me only, and in rampant greed.”
—Richard Nelson (b. 1950)
“Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God; Ethics does not.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)