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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter February 14, 2013

An ethical framework for the disposal of autologous stem cells

  • Carlo Petrini EMAIL logo

Abstract

The disposal of haematopoietic stem cells stored for autologous transplantation purposes becomes a problem for hospitals when the conditions for their preservation cease to exist. When these cells have been stored for a considerable time the problem often becomes an ethical one involving informed consent and is linked to at least two simultaneous circumstances: (i) the indications regarding disposal contained in available informed consent papers are either absent or too generic; (ii) the person who provided the sample can no longer be traced. This article proposes and discusses some of the ethical criteria for addressing this problem on the basis of the so-called “principles” of North American bioethics, and compares them with some of the principles and values proposed in other models of bioethics.


Corresponding author: Carlo Petrini, Head of the Bioethics Unit, Office of the President, Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italian National Institute of Health), Via Giano della Bella 34, 00162 Rome, Italy, Phone: +39 06 4990 4021, Fax: +39 06 4990 4303

Conflict of interest statement

Author’s conflict of interest disclosure: The author stated that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this article.

Research funding: None declared.

Employment or leadership: None declared.

Honorarium: None declared.

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Received: 2012-11-26
Accepted: 2013-1-22
Published Online: 2013-02-14
Published in Print: 2013-02-01

©2013 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston

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