Paul Pimentel
Hannah Warren born in 2010 in South Korea 2010 with the inability to breathe, eat, drink or swallow on her own. Doctors there told her parents there was no hope and they expected her to die. Until the operation at a U.S. hospital, where a windpipe was grown from stem cells, the youngest patient in the world to benefit from the experimental treatment.
Paige Poppleton born in 2013 in Botswana with Cerebral Palsy was injected with stem cells from an umbilical cord repairing the damaged tissue in her brain and giving back her ability to walk, see and speak.
Stem cell therapy is transforming medicine and with it the lives of increasing numbers of patients with life-threatening illnesses
The treatment of more than 80 different diseases, including cerebral palsy, leukemia, sickle cell disease, diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, spinal cord injuries and muscle damage.
Just like many other of the new arising technologies such as artificial intellegince, facial recognition and network security biometrics, Stem cell research is no exception to controversy. The main controversy is due to the moral and ethical dilemma that is associated with embryonic stem cells. However, the amount of pros, benefits, and possibilities of embryonic stem cells it should be clear how much it outweighs the cons. I stated previously how stem cells can treat major diseases but stem cells can do much more such as build an entire organism from scratch, develop healthy tissues or organs that could replace damaged ones, and with proper funding can have the potential to study diseases more closely all of which will provide humanitarian benefits.
This may sound absurd or impossible to some of you so to have a better perspective of this technology we must first understand stem cells.
Stem cell research has been around since the 1950’s but what has sparked a strong push in the funding of stem cells is the discovery of embryonic stem cells which differ from the other type of stem cells called adult stem cells. Both are unspecialized cells with abilities to divide indefinitely, forming hundreds of copies of themselves. What makes Embryonic cells so special is that they are pluripotent meaning that they have the potential to divide into any cell of the human body. Now the Adult Stem cells are found throughout the body however, with Embryonic stem cells well you guessed it! Are only found in the embryos. More specifically the inner cell mass of blastocysts which is 4-5 days post fertilization. In order to extract these stem cells for use involves the human embryo being destroyed.
Now, with this information sets forth the moral issue between human life and benefitting or saving single or multiple lives. Those opposed to embryonic stem cell research argue that the potential benefits of such research do not justify the termination of a young human life. The question of what constitutes a human life comes into fruition. Questions such as Does an emb...
