Stem Cell Research

Fighting For Life: Stem Cell Research

Stem cell research is a very recent topic of debate which is subject to many arguments made by people with many different ideas around the world. There has been much controversy, along with good cause. Stem cell research debate is one of those topics which has no right or wrong answers. Although its main reason for existence is not to do harm, (on the contrary, it has many present and potential benefits for human life) there are beliefs that using stem cell research is unnatural. As said before, there are no right or wrong answers in this debate, just the possibility of reaching to a potential where life will be much more longer and healthier for millions, and immensely richer for a few hundreds. The hard part of this quest that it contains social and ethical challenges that are still waiting to be resolved.

Stem cells are basically cells that did not differentiate into normal body cells like organ cells, nerve cells. They have the most amazing ability to transform from one cell phase to another one, meaning that they have the ability to differentiate into many types of cells. Stem cells can be found in the embryos of living organisms and in the” adult” cells. The term “adult” here means that the cells that are part of an organism which is way past the phase of embryonic development. It has nothing to do with the age of the organism.

Stem cells can be basically classified as embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells, as can be seen above. The source of the classification is more than one. First of all, the two types of cells have different extraction locations. While adult stem cells can be found in the organism, it is very rare. It is as rare as 1 of every 1000 bone marrow cells. This is an important set-back since a high number of cells is needed in order to do research and also in order to treat a patient for a certain medical problem, which is something that could be done in the near future. More on this will be...