The Real Potential
The really strange thing about the gut-reactions to this subject is that there was little if any reaction to these cells being thown out as biological waste; no-one cared. Culturing these same cells, however, is to some people, destroying human lives. We can thaw them and throw them away, but we cannot use them to cure, say, Parkinson’s Disease.
Forgive me if I have a hard time following the logic. What nefarious uses can these cells be used for? Could you create a human? Possibly, though this is very difficult. Theoretically, I imagine, you could remove the nucleus, implant it into a viable zygote and grow a person, however this still requires a uterus, which must actually be in a woman. Those few creatures that have been successfully cloned (which is an entirely different ethical issue) were still grown to term inside a mother. They may be genetically identical to the mother, but the process of birth was still the same.
Why can’t we just use adult stem cells?
Why is it so important that they be embryonic stem cells?
The short answer is age. Adult stem cells wear out and at this time there are no types of adult cells that have been found that have the same flexibility to be, literally, any type of cell in the body. Through the process of life, being sunburned etc, adult stem cells wear out and may have damaged DNA that inhibits their usefulness. There is some evidence that one of the reasons we break down more as we age is that the stem cells we have get older and lose their ability to rebuild, or die as time wears on. With the current ban on using government funds to create new stem cell lines those lines that were existing prior to the ban have now been cultured for many successive generations and, in effect, are beginning to wear out.
In conclusion:
- To be human life, there must be the potential for human life. For there to be potential, there must be a uterus.
- For years the same cells that we would now like to use for research, were simply thrown away as biological waste with little, if any, argument for them being human life.
- The potential for these cells to be used to cure disease is enormous. We could potentially cure diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, paralysis, anemia, burns, kidney and liver failure, heart failure and so on and so on. They could be used to cure diabetes.
- Can we really, ETHICALLY, say that we should hinder, in any way, the ability to generate cures, not treatments, CURES, for some of the most debilitating human diseases? Can we ethically say that it is OK to throw embryos away, but it is NOT OK to use them to cure disease?
I truly think not and the more time we waste debating, the more suffering there is that is allowed to continue. Stem cell research, along with research into the human genome, is possibly the most exciting thing to come to medicine since insulin was used successfully in 1922. Just as the [nearly] dead came to life with that miracle drug, the lame will be able to walk and, to get as melodramatic as possible, the blind to see.
For more information, check out the National Institute of Health’s FAQ’s for Stem-Cell research: