Regenerative medicine as a big project

Junji Kayukawa, a journalist specialising in human reproductive technology, urges us to pay attention to the fact that “regenerative medicine” was included as one of the major topics of the Japanese government’s “Millennium Project,” announced in 1999, together with other advanced technologies in the field of information science, medicine, and environmental science. This Millennium Project was launched to facilitate technological innovation for a new industry, and the government spent 250 billion yen on research in these technologies in the fiscal year 2000 (5). This implies that research on regenerative medicine is strongly supported by the Japanese government, medical researchers, and the industry sector (San, Kan, Gaku, in Japanese).

The first meeting of the Japanese Society for Regenerative Medicine was held in 2002. The news media reported that members of the [10/11] Society objected strongly to the ban on “therapeutic human cloning” (6). In the second meeting held in 2003, Makoto Oohama, chairperson of the board of directors, Japan Spinal Cord Foundation, stressed that research on therapeutic human cloning should be allowed because it may lead to the regeneration of an injured spinal cord.

On the other hand, journalists and researchers who are sceptical about therapeutic human cloning and human ES cell research have published papers and books criticising the argument that aimed to promote these technologies.

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The Ethics of Human Cloning and the Sprout of Human Life (2004)
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