3 The Immortal Life of Ethics? The Alienation of Body Tissue ... 63the destruction of an embryo (Holland et al. 2001 ). However, since 2007
a new source of human pluripotent stem cells has become prominent in
research—iPSC. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) arise from adult
somatic cells, such as a skin cell, that are genetically reprogrammed into
pluripotent cells (Takahashi et al. 2007 ; Yu et al. 2007 ). Nucleofection
(an electroporation based method) has become the most common way to
introduce the reprogramming factors into adult cells (Si-Tayeb et al. 2010 ).
Although additional research is needed, iPSC research has created
new avenues for human disease modelling and therapy. It is hoped by
clinicians and scientists alike that iPSCs will help lead to the develop-
ment of new therapies (Kim 2014 ). Since the development of iPSCs,
they have been promoted widely, particularly in media coverage, as an
ethical alternative to hESC (Cyranoski 2008 ). Nonetheless, unique eth-
ical issues arise from the use of iPSCs, including the creation of new
life forms, such as gametes, that could have potential to develop into
an embryo (Karpin 2006 ) and other previously unforeseen ethical issues
such as personalised medicine (Tutton 2014 ). Although some person-
alised medicines are marketed towards personalised benefit, at their
heart, they seek to differentiate ‘human beings according to known or
putative genotypes and their statistical association with certain states of
being’ (Tutton 2014 : 162). Given that iPSCs can be generated directly
from adult tissue, many of the contentious issues associated with
human embryonic samples are avoided. However, they present their
own unique ethical issues, therefore a comprehensive informed consent
process is crucial to ensure participants of iPSC research fully under-
stand both the broad and specific implications of their involvement.
The iPSC Research Study
Our interest in iPSC research was underpinned by the pressing clinical
need to better understand eye disease. Given the difficulty in directly
interrogating ocular cells from living patients, iPSC technology offers a
revolutionary means by which disease-processes can be studied in people
with various eye diseases. For example, using current iPSC technology,
it is now possible to take an adult cell (such as a skin cell), turn it into
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