In the October edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics, Akabayashi and colleagues state that ’to establish a heterogeneous [induced pluripotent stem cell] iPSC bank covering roughly 80% of Japan’s population…the Japanese government decided to invest JPY110 billion over 10 years in regenerative medicine research; a quarter of this was to be allocated to the iPSC stock project'. While they claim this amount of money to be an unfair distribution of state resources, we believe their assessment is based on a (...) misunderstanding of the facts. Similarly, other criticisms by them are based on mistaken interpretations. This article is a rebuttal to the arguments that form the basis of Akabayashi and colleagues’ five criticisms by explaining their misinterpretations. (shrink)

In the January edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics, Fujita and Tabuchi responded that we misunderstood the ‘facts’ in our previous article. Our article’s method was twofold. First, it appealed to normative analysis and publicly accessible materials, and second, it targeted a policy-making approach to public funding. We specifically did not focus on the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application or induced pluripotent stem stock projects. The Authors raised five criticisms, including transparency of our interpretation of public funding (...) policy. We reply to these criticisms by clarifying facts, and demonstrating new data, and asking the Authors what qualifies as a ‘good fact’ in medical ethics. We note that in some cases, it might be possible to examine to what extent facts are ‘true’, while in other cases, ‘facts’ are laden with ‘values’, which cannot be confirmed or falsified with observation alone. The level of ‘good’ implicit in a fact is a challenging issue that goes well beyond science and makes metaethical assumptions about the relationships between facts and values more broadly. (shrink)