I decided to make this topic because Stem Cell research is very important thing and at the same time because people are not informed it is controversial. Basically in US embryonic stem cell research is at halt. And why? This highly potential life saver is being oppressed by religious side since there are lots of people that feel how stem cell research is testing their ethical boundaries, cultural and taboo as well. So what are stem cells? Where do they come from? Do scientists really kill babies for them? What can they heal? Are they only used for healing?
Here's something that I found out.
First how are laws in US (I'll put it in different color so that it differentiate from other text):
In August of 2001 President George W. Bush addressed the nation from his ranch saying "I have concluded that we should allow federal funds to be used for research on these existing stem cell lines, where the life and death decision has already been made." So it appeared, some federal funds would flow into the new research field.
Then in 2005 Congress made a legislation that would have eased Bush's restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, but Bush vetoed it twice after it had passed both houses of Congress.
Bush's restrictions were then softened by Barack Obama, through an executive order.
By late 2010 U.S. Supreme Court would eventually outlawed federal support for the use of federal funds for not only deriving new human embryonic stem cell lines but even working with existing ones. Although the decision was overturned by a federal appeals court, the issue is likely to remain before the courts for some time.
- Stem cells have been used to treat patients for for decades in the form of bone marrow transplants. The stem cells in donor marrow that rebuild the blood system of the patient receiving the transplant. There are two basic categories of stem cells: adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Some adult stem cells have more "plasticity" in regenerating tissue types and are known as multipotent. An adult stem cell from the liver, for example, can be coaxed or reprogrammed to regenerate tissue for the kidney. Multipotent adult stem cells are also found in umbilical cord blood, amniotic fluid, and bone marrow and have the ability to repair and regenerate many types of tissue.
The embryonic stem cell is pluripotent because it represents a type of cell that builds entire bodies.
- One of the most famous examples of healing with from umbilical cord is Nash family. In the year 2000 Molly Nash, 6 years old, suffered from a severe blood disease. To save her, her parents produced a number of embryos through in vitro fertilization. When stem cells from her brother's umbilical cord entered her body, Molly's life was saved, but because of that Nash family received a letter from the Vatican excommunicating them from the Catholic Church, even though they are Jews.
- BUT stem cells from umbilical do not build all the tissues of the body. They do not make hearts, pancreases, livers, kidneys, skin, eyes, bone, and brain. The cells of the early embryo and their successor cells do. They create all the tissues of the body.
- In 2007, scientific reports of reprogrammed skin cells that behave like embryonic stem cells entered the media. These genetically reprogrammed cells have proven to have capabilities similar to those of embryonic stem cells. They may be able to make all the tissues and organs of the body and possibly to serve as the basis for cell therapies, but that we won't know for some time. One thing we do know, however, is that cells in the early embryo are the architects of development, because they are so versatile.
Many people have said that with the advent of reprogrammed adult cells we no longer need to work with embryonic stem cells, this is not truth. Scientists still have not shown that reprogrammed adult cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), are the equivalent of embryonic stem cells (ESCs).
- How early embryos are we talking about? Only few days old and while Christians call them "babies", scientists call them blastocysts. Which reminds me what Sam Harris said: "A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly." And these are all blastomeres from fertility clinics.
For instance in 2006, Robert Lanza had derived human embryonic stem cell lines by removing a single cell from eight-to ten-cell embryos (blastomeres) and grew the stem cell line from them. Because of that Lanza was attacked by Catholic Senator Sam Brownback because the single cell that was removed could have produced a twin.
- What diseases could be healed with stem cells? Well a large veriety of them: from wounds, missing organs, limbs to Alzheimers and cancer.
To make this regenerative medicine a reality, will take a lot of work. Main of which is to figure out how to direct these cells down the development pathway so that they can be used to repair diseased or damaged tissues. For medicine stem cells would be as the invention of the transistor was for electronics.
- While during last two centuries most of the major advances in medicine have taken place in western world, the barriers that religions in the west are imposing now has caused Singapore, China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, and other Asian countries to invest heavily in stem cell research, and without heated public debate over the moral status of the human embryo (blastomere).
The most famous one is Biopolis in Singapore that has generous research grants, tax breaks, and numerous other governmental incentives worth many millions of US dollars.
- Stem cells and immune cells are also used to assist in the task of detecting the effectiveness of new vaccines without using laboratory animals by replicating human immune system in a laboratory.
Here's something that I found out.
First how are laws in US (I'll put it in different color so that it differentiate from other text):
In August of 2001 President George W. Bush addressed the nation from his ranch saying "I have concluded that we should allow federal funds to be used for research on these existing stem cell lines, where the life and death decision has already been made." So it appeared, some federal funds would flow into the new research field.
Then in 2005 Congress made a legislation that would have eased Bush's restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, but Bush vetoed it twice after it had passed both houses of Congress.
Bush's restrictions were then softened by Barack Obama, through an executive order.
By late 2010 U.S. Supreme Court would eventually outlawed federal support for the use of federal funds for not only deriving new human embryonic stem cell lines but even working with existing ones. Although the decision was overturned by a federal appeals court, the issue is likely to remain before the courts for some time.
- Stem cells have been used to treat patients for for decades in the form of bone marrow transplants. The stem cells in donor marrow that rebuild the blood system of the patient receiving the transplant. There are two basic categories of stem cells: adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Some adult stem cells have more "plasticity" in regenerating tissue types and are known as multipotent. An adult stem cell from the liver, for example, can be coaxed or reprogrammed to regenerate tissue for the kidney. Multipotent adult stem cells are also found in umbilical cord blood, amniotic fluid, and bone marrow and have the ability to repair and regenerate many types of tissue.
The embryonic stem cell is pluripotent because it represents a type of cell that builds entire bodies.
- One of the most famous examples of healing with from umbilical cord is Nash family. In the year 2000 Molly Nash, 6 years old, suffered from a severe blood disease. To save her, her parents produced a number of embryos through in vitro fertilization. When stem cells from her brother's umbilical cord entered her body, Molly's life was saved, but because of that Nash family received a letter from the Vatican excommunicating them from the Catholic Church, even though they are Jews.
- BUT stem cells from umbilical do not build all the tissues of the body. They do not make hearts, pancreases, livers, kidneys, skin, eyes, bone, and brain. The cells of the early embryo and their successor cells do. They create all the tissues of the body.
- In 2007, scientific reports of reprogrammed skin cells that behave like embryonic stem cells entered the media. These genetically reprogrammed cells have proven to have capabilities similar to those of embryonic stem cells. They may be able to make all the tissues and organs of the body and possibly to serve as the basis for cell therapies, but that we won't know for some time. One thing we do know, however, is that cells in the early embryo are the architects of development, because they are so versatile.
Many people have said that with the advent of reprogrammed adult cells we no longer need to work with embryonic stem cells, this is not truth. Scientists still have not shown that reprogrammed adult cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), are the equivalent of embryonic stem cells (ESCs).
- How early embryos are we talking about? Only few days old and while Christians call them "babies", scientists call them blastocysts. Which reminds me what Sam Harris said: "A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly." And these are all blastomeres from fertility clinics.
For instance in 2006, Robert Lanza had derived human embryonic stem cell lines by removing a single cell from eight-to ten-cell embryos (blastomeres) and grew the stem cell line from them. Because of that Lanza was attacked by Catholic Senator Sam Brownback because the single cell that was removed could have produced a twin.
- What diseases could be healed with stem cells? Well a large veriety of them: from wounds, missing organs, limbs to Alzheimers and cancer.
To make this regenerative medicine a reality, will take a lot of work. Main of which is to figure out how to direct these cells down the development pathway so that they can be used to repair diseased or damaged tissues. For medicine stem cells would be as the invention of the transistor was for electronics.
- While during last two centuries most of the major advances in medicine have taken place in western world, the barriers that religions in the west are imposing now has caused Singapore, China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, and other Asian countries to invest heavily in stem cell research, and without heated public debate over the moral status of the human embryo (blastomere).
The most famous one is Biopolis in Singapore that has generous research grants, tax breaks, and numerous other governmental incentives worth many millions of US dollars.
- Stem cells and immune cells are also used to assist in the task of detecting the effectiveness of new vaccines without using laboratory animals by replicating human immune system in a laboratory.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
