Indeed this kind of work may sound unethical, but firstly, scientific research (and science in general) doesn’t have the objective of “behaving well”: The easiest example we should consider is that the same discoveries between the beginning and the middle of the 20th century led to discover new efficient ways to produce electricity and also to destroy cities (atomic bombs and nuclear power plants both rely on nuclear fission).

If scientific works are considered against the ethics, they should get outlawed, scientists neither have the right or the possibility to do such.

I strongly believe this is the way it should work: scientists should take neither moral or ethics into consideration, because of the biases (should a scientist feel bad for the direct or indirect bad consequences of his research paper?), but they should comply to the laws of the country (city, state, etc) they conduct their research in.

Secondly, in the article, there’s this:

“We need to start asking questions about whether or not it’s possible for these organoids to develop any sentient-like capabilities,” Farahany says.

And this also:

Farahany says questions also arise about whether researchers should be able to “own” brain organoids like they do other types of tissue, as well as how they should dispose of these organoids after their research concludes.

Therefore, they are not sure about what they should do because they are aware they are experimenting something very touchy and therefore raise the indirect question “should we continue experimenting on possibly sentient human organoids?”

Maybe some law should be voted about this dilemma before other researches are conducted, because now that we know there are ethical issues, right?