Argumentative Essay On Embryonic Stem Cells

What is a Stem Cell?

Stem cells, while during the early stages of growth, has the potential to form into any type of cell. These cells can become muscle cells, skin cells, brain cells, red blood cells, etc. There are two main types of stem cells, somatic stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Somatic stem cells, also know as “adult” stem cells, are undifferentiated cells found in organs and tissues that have a limited capacity to renew itself and to differentiate. Embryonic stem cells, on the other hand, are obtained by embryos. Scientist are very interested with the benefits of embryonic stem cells. These scientists use leftover embryos from “in vitro” procedures and do studies on them. The results scientists have found from both Embryonic

However, there is a large amount of research supporting the possibility. It is theorized that specific stem cells could replenish the brain of neurotrophins. These stem cells are called Neural stem cells. If these cells were added back into the body, it would allow the brain to regain a steady income of healthy, growing neurons. With enough neuron and neurotrophin production, the brain could possibly cure the Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists have attempted to test this theory, however they have only used the stem cells on mice. They chose mice who appeared to show normal symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease as well as memory loss. The scientists then injected the neural stem cells into the mice brain. After this procedure, they studied the progress of the animal, and they seemed to improve memory wise. Now research has been conducted to fully understand how the stem cells accomplished this. Still with all this research, humans have not been injected with these neural stem cells. (Euro Stem Cell

These doctors injected islet cells and various other hormones into people suffering from diabetes. However, adding islet cells to the body caused the cell that produced insulin to tire and decreased the amount of insulin they produced. Due to this occurrence when islet cells are injected, less than 8% of cell transplants were successful. Even though this treatment was overall unsuccessful, new test have been shown to be more promising. James Shapiro and his colleagues created an experiment that required transferring larger amounts of islet cells into the body than previously done. However along with the larger amounts of islet cells, they also used “immunosuppressant” therapy. Immunosuppressant therapy can prevent certain activity in the immune system, which would allow the islet cells to go into the body without decreasing initial insulin production. Out of seven people who went through this procedure, all of them found it successful. These patients no longer had to manually take insulin, their bodies did it efficiently again. (Stem Cells Ch.7 Diabetes Par. 6 and