Stem Cell Research

A 28 year old mother is playing with her child when her left leg begins to tingle. She brushes it off as nothing to worry about. Within the next couple of days her vision gets very cloudy and blurry. After many tests at the doctor’s office, the diagnosis is found to be Multiple Sclerosis (M.S.). She is given a grim vision of her future in a wheel chair. For many weeks the mother was depressed, asking why me and what will happen to my children? The final question was what she can do for herself? Is there a way to help herself avoid or prolong this horrible disease? There were many articles to read and some shows to watch on different theories on how nutrition, drugs, chemo therapy, or stem cell therapy could help. After all the research was done, in her opinion the most promising treatment was from stem cell therapy. Scientists are discovering new and better ways to harvest stem cells today with out using human embryos. People deal everyday with the mental and physical effects of M.S. The biggest fear in this mother’s life is that one of her children will be diagnosed with M.S. She never knows when an attack will happen. Will the her legs or sight be the first to go? It is like living with a ticking bomb inside one’s self and there is no one who knows how to defuse it. The hope is to one day find a cure. With Stem Cell Research there is a possibility of finding a cure for M.S. and other diseases.

Stem cell research could be one of the biggest breakthroughs in medical history. Stem cell research has shown signs of finding treatments or cures for many diseases and may be the answer to correcting dying or malfunctioning organs. Many people are against stem cell research because they are uninformed about the new ways of harvesting stem cells. The main focus on stem cell harvesting should not be where and how they are obtained but how scientists are trying to save lives. Medical research has brought many exceptional improvements in one’s health today. For instance, cures or treatments for numerous types of diseases, pain medications, and numerous advancements that have changed the way we live today.

There are two sides to the study of human embryonic stem cells. There are those who oppose it, and those who support it. However, to truly have an opinion, one must understand what the study contains. The National Institute of Health says,

A stem cell is a cell that has the ability to divide (self replicate) for indefinite periods…under the right conditions, or given the right signals, a stem cell can give rise (differentiate) too many different cell types that make up the organism. (National Institutes of Health, November 2003). That is, stem cells have the potential to develop into mature cells that have characteristics, shapes and specialized functions, such as heart cells, skin cells, or nerve cells (National Institutes of Health, November 2003).

Basically scientists are saying they can reproduce certain types of cells that can be used to treat dying or malfunctioning organisms. Scientists investigate human embryonic stem cells because they can become any kind of cell. Because of this, the cells hold an exceptional promise to regenerating not only body parts such as heart cells, liver cells, etc., but also at regenerating nerve bundles in the nervous system.

Ethics becomes an issue because one way to harvest the cells is from human embryos or fertilized eggs. Pro-life groups have sued the U.S. government over stem cell research because they say that life begins at conception, which means it now falls under the same stipulation as abortion and cloning. (Catholic Spirituality. October 2003). Some would say this is a reasonable argument about stem cell research since it is solely-based on where the stem cells are taken from, which is a living embryo that is destroyed. The pro-life community believes that all the embryos still have the potential to live. To solve the problem, people who support pro-life say there are more ethical ways to obtain the cells. One way is to take the cells from aborted fetuses or from healthy adults; however the adult cells do not show the same promising effects as the ones from embryos. (Reeves, October 2003) There are approximately 4000 abortions in the United States and 120,000 abortions world wide performed daily (Bishop, 2004). Why throw away this fetus and give it no meaning when that fetus can possibly hold the answers and cures for so many living people? While abortions should not be recommended in order to support stem cell therapy it is important to make something valuable come of this little life that will never develop into a human.

There are some couples that cannot conceive their own children, so they turn to in vitro fertilization (IVF) (Blastomere, 2006). Ten or more embryos are prepared, but only three or four are picked and implanted in the surrogate mother (Blastomere, 2006). Sometimes the left over eggs are frozen in liquid nitrogen called “cryopreservation” which brings on its own set of risks (Blastomere, 2006). The embryo may die while frozen or during the unfreezing process (Blastomere, 2006). The other possibilities for the left over embryos are to just be flushed down the sink, burned, or exposed to the air to die naturally (Blastomere, 2006). This is all done while the embryos are still living (Blastomere, 2006). The simple solution to this should be to donate the extra embryos to research (Blastomere, 2006). Instead of simply wasting them, scientists can use them to further the possibilities of stem cell research (Blastomere, 2006). Researchers rely on embryos produced during in vitro fertilization (IVF) attempts (Blastomere, 2006). Currently at least 400,000 frozen embryos lie unused in U.S. fertility clinics, and thousands are typically discarded annually (Blastomere, 2006).

Although it seems that stem cell research is a useful way to use the excess embryos, the embryos are not always wasted (Reaves, 2003). Some of the embryos that are frozen wait to be adopted by other couples (Reaves, 2003). This is an alternative to being destroyed (Reaves, 2003). This seems as though it should be the fate of all excess embryos; but again, during the transition from being frozen to thawing, there is a risk of death (Reaves, 2003).

One alterative solution to harvesting stem cells without harming human embryos is called Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PDG) (Choi, November 2006). Researchers have tested on six human embryos by using micro eye-droppers to extract 35 blastomeres, one at a time (Choi, November 2006). They then generated two stable human embryonic stem cell lineages (Choi, November 2006). The cell lines behaved like their conventional counterparts, capable of replicating for months and developing into other cell types