Developing a Research Question

In this post, I will begin brainstorming for Project 2. To do this, I will pose a series of research questions that I might be interested in exploring further for this project.

luckey_sun, "research." 02/16/12 via Flickr. Attribution-ShareAlike License.

1. Should the U.S. government provide funding for controversial stem cell research?

As I was conducting research for Project 1, I read some articles that spoke about funding for stem cell research. Many private corporations, such as the NIH, decided to pull funding from research that involved experimenting on human embryos. This made me interested in what public funding is available for this type of research, and what types of debates circle around this issue.

2. Are prosthetics becoming an unnatural way to enhance an individual's natural abilities?

Before I settled on my controversy for Project 1, I was very interested in exploring this topic as well. Along with genetic engineering, prosthetics have been under much debate, as some people believe that they are an unnatural way to somehow enhance an individual's abilities. I would love to further explore this topic, as I have not really had the chance to learn about this idea before.

3. Are artificial organs made via 3-D printing a good replacement for functional organs?

A couple weeks ago, I came across an article explaining that an organ that was created using 3-D printing was now a functional part of a man's body. While this seemed like it should be a good thing, I was surprised to see that a lot of controversy exists regarding this application of 3-D printing. This is an idea that I would be interested in exploring further, especially because I don't have any prior knowledge regarding the issue.