The Promise of Stem Cell Research

Despite political uncertainty, stem cell research is racing ahead, but not without caution and ethical speculation. Human pluripotent stem cells are an abundant and unique medical resource. In 1998, scientists at several universities isolated and successfully cultured human stem cells. This research was conducted independently of federal aid and the cells were derived from early stage embryos donated voluntarily from couples undergoing fertility treatment in an in vitro fertilization clinic or from nonliving fetuses obtained from first trimester pregnancies. Women who donated the fetal tissue did so after making the decision to terminate the pregnancy.

The promise of stem cell research lies in the fact that stem cells give rise to almost all of the cell types of the body-muscle, nerve, heart, and blood. Patients suffering from many different diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, could benefit from the continuance of stem cell research. By furthering research in this area, pluripotent stem cells may be able to help generate cells and tissue for transplantation. Pluripotent stem cells have the potential to develop into specialized cells that could be used as replacement cells and tissues and tissues to treat diseases and conditions such as Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries, stroke, burns heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis. Stem cell research can improve our understanding of the events that occur during normal human development and help to understand what causes birth defects and cancer. Furthermore, it can change the way we develop drugs and test them for safety. Drugs may be initially tested on cells developed pluripotent stem cells and only the safest candidate drugs would move onto animal and human testing.

Derivation of ES cells from human embryos and EG and fetal stem cells from aborted, fetal tissues raise numerous ethical, legal, religious, and policy issues. The potential use of generating human tissue from these stem cells is a subject of ongoing public debate. A recent application of this research is currently being conducted by a team of researchers who are injecting stem cells into the spinal chords of monkeys inflicted with Lou Gehrig's disease. It's a pivotal new experiment that tries to determine if stem cells found in human embryos and fetuses can regrow healthy neurons, a necessary step to threat Lou Gehrig's. It comes at a pivotal time as well, when scientists are nervously watching their backs, as the new Bush administration will heed anti-abortion calls to block federal funding of stem cells research. Even if Bush does block funding, the monkey research will not stop as it is privately funded, like many other stem cell research experiments.

Anti-abortion activists call it immoral to use the cells because they originally cam from embryos discarded by fertility clinics or from aborted fetuses. Pope John Paul II even spoke out against stem cell research last summer. Congress bans federally funded research that destroys human embryos, something which stem cell research does in fact do. However, these embryos are the size of a period at the end of a sentence, a few clusters of cells. Furthermore, privately funded researchers already have culled embryonic cells and then multiplied them in laboratory dishes to create "cell lines". The NIH plans to fund only research using already grown cell lines; thereby NIH scientists never touch an actual embryo.

Regardless of the political and moral debated surrounding stem cell research, science is charging ahead with an optimistic outlook. Scientists who implanted stem cells into the monkeys cite promising early signs that the first stem cells implanted are starting to grow. Critics of stem cell research say scientists should use stem cells from adults instead of fetuses in order to avoid controversy. Many researchers are studying adult stem cells and are cautious that adult stem cells may not be as flexible as embryonic and fetal stem cells. As the research continues the debates will grow, and so will the intended medical outcomes. Stem cell research is not going away any time soon, therefore policy must begetting under way in order to adjust to controversial political and ethical climate surrounding the research.

Works Cited
www.nih.gov/news/stemcell/index
Joyner, Alexandra: "Embryonic Stem Cells", Gene Targeting: a practical approach, Oxford; New York; Oxford University Press, 1998.