Dartmouth students voiced their support for continued federal funding for stem cell research last Saturday at a day-long symposium entitled "Student Science Court: The Future of Stem Cell Research" in Cook Auditorium.
The forum was attended by undergraduate, graduate and medical students as well as many faculty and community members.
Total attendance was estimated at around 230 people.
While stem cell research -- involving the use of a type of cell capable of differentiating into several other types -- offers many potential medical benefits, many people have serious ethical qualms about the use of this type of cell because it is primarily derived from aborted fetuses and frozen embryos left over from in vitro fertilization procedures.
After a day spent listening to panelists discuss the science and ethics of stem cell research, students attending the symposium filled out ballots asking about their views on the issue.
Of the more than 150 students who voted, 80 percent rated the importance of research a four or a five on a scale of one to five, with one being unimportant and five being very important.
Ninety-four percent rated the importance of stem cell research a three or above.
Regarding funding, 25 percent expressed the opinion that federally funded research projects should be prohibited from using human stem cells derived from embryos, and only 14 percent thought all stem cell research should be banned.
Responses to two other questions mirrored these results. Sixty-five percent of respondents thought federal funding of stem cell research using but not deriving cells should continue, and 61 percent would permit funding of research both using and deriving the cells.
However, 65 percent of the participants were against federal funding for research using stem cells derived from embryos created expressly for the purpose.
During the morning, panelists including medical researchers, representative of biomedical companies and physicians discussed the science behind stem cell research and the possible results of continued investigation of the topic.
Medical research involving stem cells could eventually result in treatments or even cures for diseases arising due to the cell death, such as Type I diabetes and neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's disease.
During the afternoon, four ethicists debated the moral and philosophical pros and cons of stem cell research.
Stem cell research is often surrounded by controversy because of the primary sources for the type of cells and also because of the genetically identical nature of lines of stem cells derived from a single source.
One of the event's organizers, professor of medicine and biochemistry Lee Witters, expressed approval of the panelist presentations, saying they "made points in a reasoned, logical way."
Saturday's debate came in response to a draft proposal by the National Institutes of Health, the government organization that manages federal funding of medical research, to restrict federal funding for experiments involving stem cells.
Both houses of Congress will also be taking up the issue in the coming months. The House of Representatives is set to consider a bill banning stem cell research while the Senate may soon consider a proposed law protecting it.
Witters said that he submitted a summary of the voting results to the NIH as part of their effort to collect responses to their proposal.
Event organizers said they were very pleased with the way the day went as well as the campus response to the event.
Witters said of the symposium topic, "It was a major societal issue argued dispassionately in the best of the academic tradition."
Saturday's forum was sponsored by the Ethics Institute and the Human Biology Program.
