The government had banned stem cell research in 2006 following a scandal involving cloning expert Hwang Woo-suk, who claimed to have made stem cells from cloned human embryos. Hwang scandalized the global scientific community when it emerged that scientific papers outlining his claim relied on falsified data.

The National Bioethics Committee said it has made the decision to allow a Seoul hospital to conduct work on human stem cells. The committee issued several conditions on the Cha Medical Center in exchange for the right to carry out human stem cell research, including hiring more bioethics experts, minimizing the use of human eggs and not citing specific diseases to prevent patients from getting their hopes elevated for potential cures.

Since that signing, there have been several that have concluded that the plan could have the opposite effect, putting off-limits for federal support much of the research underway, including work that the Bush administration endorsed. “We’re very concerned,” said Amy Comstock Rick, chief executive of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, “If they don’t change this, very little current research would be eligible. It’s a huge issue.”

The main concern is the focus on strict new ethics criteria that the National Institutes of Health has proposed. Current advocates of stem cell research say that the majority of the research being done in the field at this time has passed close scrutiny but that the procedures varied and usually did not match the details specified in these newly proposed guidelines.

“It’s not that past practices were shoddy,” said Lawrence S. Goldstein, director of the stem cell program at the University of California at San Diego. “But they don’t necessarily meet every letter of the new guidelines moving forward. We’d have to throw everything out and start all over again.”

Obama’s executive order reversed restrictions placed on the research by his predecessor, George W. Bush, which freed up laboratories to start working with the cells, which can give rise to any kind of cell in the body.

Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said “This action is morally wrong because it encourages the destruction of innocent human life, treating vulnerable human beings as mere products to be harvested.”

Now that Mr. Obama has lifted the restrictions, Catholic theologians have been debating how embryonic stem cell research can be made “less morally repugnant”, in the words of one theologian, Father Thomas J. Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center of Georgetown University, who then suggested several ways the Obama administration could find middle ground.

His suggestions included not creating embryos for the sole purpose of research but instead using only excess embryos produced at fertility clinics that are scheduled to be destroyed anyway. He also said researchers should show that the work they are doing can’t be done with non-embryonic stem cells, and that the research done using the embryonic stem cells should try advancing toward the goal of using only non-embryonic stem cells.

Controversy has risen in the recent years as to whether donors should go for public cord blood banks or the private ones. There are several factors which contribute to these sentiments. Some physicians do not recommend donors choose private banks because many of these banks are not standardized.  The American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) points the fact that private cord blood banks are beneficial only for those parents whose relative needs a current transplant, but benefit no one else. Private storage is recommended for a family that has a medical history of metabolic disorder. Alternatively the AAP suggests that parents donate to public cord blood banks where cord blood can be made available to many people for treating various diseases. One of the primary reasons for such recommendations is that around ten thousand people are diagnosed with diseases each year and only public cord blood banks provide cord blood globally to any patient who need be treated with cell transplant. Private cord blood banks will provide cord blood only to donors (for their use or their families) who store cord blood for a fee.

Another major reason for physicians not encouraging private cord blood banks is because of the marketing and advertising strategies used by some of these banks. The private banks target every expectant couple and convince them that they are potentially providing a life saving opportunity to their families. This sort of emotional reasoning has worked in many parents to go in for private banks which stores cord blood exclusively for the donor’s use. Even doctors who are convinced by the stem- cell advances encourage parents (who can afford to pay that money) to opt for private banks so that cord blood can be used to save their child’s future or another family member. But there is no correct numbers to quote about the risk of a child needing stem- cell in the future. The APC and ACOG (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) studies reveal that numbers would fall anywhere between 1 in 1000 and 1 in 200000, whereas some the private banks have advertised numbers as low as 1 in 2700.

As private cord blood banking is expensive, parents should research which one is best suited for their family’s needs. Some things they should check before going with private cord blood banks are whether the bank is accredited by the American Association of Blood Banks, the number of cord blood units it stores, and the number of successful transplants it has conducted with the stored samples and the way it is stored (whether in single unit or small units).