Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
is controversial. Gaining access to embryonic stems cells to develop
cells for treatment requires the destruction of an embryo. Therapeu-
tic cloning involves creating a very early embryo in the laboratory
that would be destroyed to obtain the embryonic stem cells.
The idea of destroying an embryo, or creating an embryo for the
sole purpose of harvesting cells, is profoundly troubling to many
people. Many people, for religious or other reasons, believe that
human life begins at fertilization and that it is morally wrong
to create an embryo only to destroy it to obtain the ES cells. To
overcome these problems, adult stem cells may provide useful cell
treatments without the destruction of an embryo, if they can be
reprogrammed in the lab to unlock the genetic instructions that
were thought to be unavailable.
Stop and Consider
Think about your beliefs on the issue of human embryonic stem
cells. Do you support their use? What kind of laws should we have in
place to regulate the work? Where would the possibility of cures for
devastating illness like Parkinson's disease fit into your consideration?
CONNECTIONS
Cell treatments are as simple and routine as a blood transfusion
and as uncertain as the use of specialized cells produced in the lab-
oratory from adult or embryonic stem cells. The history of blood
transfusion suggests that it will take a lot of research and perhaps
a long time to solve the mysteries of these stem cells. From the first
sheep blood transfusion, it took several hundred years for physi-
cians to learn how to transfuse blood safely. Even today, it takes
constant vigilance and research to make sure a blood transfusion
is safe, a lesson learned tragically in the early years of the AIDS
epidemic. Blood stem cell transplants, though life-saving in some
situations, can pose the risk of potentially deadly graft versus
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