Stem Cell Research
Stem cells are primary undifferentiated cells that have the ability to differentiate into other cell types depending on the situation. This ability of stem cells makes them a useful repair material for the body to replenish other cells as long as the organism is alive. Medical researchers think that stem cells should be used in the field of regenerative medicine and should have the potential to change the face of human disease by repairing specific human tissues or growing organs. There is an ongoing political, ethical and religious debates keeping alive controversy surrounding the use of stem cells in regenerative medicine. The primary controversy with human stem cells starts from the fact of how they get created. Some of the stem cells are the by-products of in-vitro fertilization: attempts of couples to give birth to children. Unused cells instead of being discarded are harvested and used for medical purposes (Kiessling). The following essay argues that it is ethical to use human stem cells in medicine and that one should use them whenever possible.
Stem cell research starts with a human blastocyst. A human blastocyst is a special stage of development of a human embryo. It is when the embryo is only about six to seven days old and is made up of around 130 cells. At this very stage one can extract embryonic stem cells from the Blatocyst. The blatocyst at this stage is too young to even divide into two identical embryos to produce identical twins. In some more rare cases, blastocyst can merge with another blastocyst of the opposite sex to create a chimera, a person whose body is made of cells with two different sets of DNA. Again this happens well past the first six to seven days when researchers usually get the stem cells. The reason why one needs to know these peculiarities is that from the biological point of view, blastocyst is not an individual or human being: it is just a number of cells. Blastocysts are in the early developmental...