Crystal Rogers (FGCU) Stem Cell Research

    Stem Cell Research is a huge controversy that faces today’s society. When it boils down to it, people are more concerned with ethics than the anything else; even though the research has brought promising outcomes for almost 70% of its patients. For example it saved one girls life that had acute myeloid leukemia. With a simple transplant, a girl’s life was saved. Now isn’t that something worth thinking about?

    Stem cells have the ability to divide and renew themselves for long periods of time. When they divide they create new cells, known as “daughter cells”. These daughter cells have the ability to become any specialized cells they want. This, in laments terms, means a world of possibilities. These cells can be grown for multiple things such as transplant medicine, new body parts for handicapped people, and could even allow for new drugs to be tested for safety before actually using them on humans.

    The two main sources for obtaining stem cells: adult cells and embryonic cells. For the most part there are no ethical problems with the use of adult stem cells because they are obtained from any consulting adult. No one is harmed during the process; they are extracted with the use of a needle from certain organs or tissues in the body. The most common places are the bone marrow or the peripheral system.

    Embryonic stem cells aren’t as easy to explain. For one, they can only be extracted from embryos. More importantly, only from eggs that have been fertilized during in vitro fertilization, not from eggs fertilized in a woman’s body. For the most part researchers get these embryos from IVF clinics because they were leftovers and have no real use; of course they still get consent from the donors. After the process begins they are placed in culture dishes and taken care of until hundreds of replicated stem cells are created.

    Those who believe that a human life starts at the point of conception oppose the extraction of embryonic stem cells because it requires the embryo to be destroyed. However advocates of the process argue that the embryo has no human features and therefore it should not be compared to murder. Along with ethical issues, medical issues come into play. For example, it is true that in some cases tumor cells have arisen in some patients.

    When it boils down to it, millions of people are dying every day due to diseases that can be prevented. With any scientific research, some experiments are going to fail and some patients might die because of it, but that same research will one day lead to cures for lots of common illnesses and diseases. The ethical issue will always be in the back of some peoples’ minds but in the long run these minuet problems will be overcome through years of research and experiments.  In the future we will no longer think about moral issues, as we will be too focused on all the diseases we cured and all the lives we saved.

This entry was posted on 24. February 2009 at 05:39 and is filed under Introduction to Sociology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.