Ethical Organ Cell Research

In 1990 Susan Lim performed Asia’s first successful liver transplant. During this keynote, the surgeon talks about the lack of organs for patients who need them, and presents her own research that suggests that organ cells may be the solution that helps meet the supply and demand issues that hospitals and surgeons face. She also shows her audience that in many instances, the organs that hospitals do have, originally come from places that should raise questions about the ethical nature in which they were received. Feeling that she must be a voice for those who don’t have one, Lim shows that it may be possible “to circumvent death, and, yet, deliver the gift of life” through the collection and transplantation of organ cells. In her intriguing keynote, Susan Lim presents an interesting argument for the use of stem cells and a more morally acceptable way of collecting them that is seemingly on the horizon.