According to a study conducted by the United Nations, nearly one billion people worldwide are affected by neurological disorders. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer’s, and Huntington’s, for example, are progressive neurodegenerative disorders that, unfortunately, come with poor prognoses. Luckily, there is increasing evidence that these diagnoses do not have to be devastating. Research done using stem cells, as both the model and the treatment, have shown that the effects of these diseases can halted and even reversed. I first learned of this topic my sophomore year when I selected it as a topic for a research paper. As I conducted my investigation, I found that the science of stem cells pervaded my thoughts for weeks. Stem cells …show more content…
They can be used to treat diseases, to develop models of disease progression, and to replace damaged organs. For neurodegenerative diseases that result from neuronal death, stem cells can replace lost neurons and restore function. With regard to cancers, stem cells can be instructed to deliver a suicide gene to cancer cells in the body, a far less invasive treatment than the ones currently in use. Finally, because stem cells can become any cell, they could be used to grow an entirely new organ to replace the one a patient has lost. Not only would this increase the availability of organs, it would lessen the chance of transplant rejection. The most promising aspect is that it is already being done in hospitals across the United States in the form of bone marrow transplants. Because the concept of stem cells is relatively new, there is not much legislation regarding their use; this is true for embryonic stem cells in particular. As someone interested in political science, the prospect of combining two of my great loves, law and science, is enticing. Lastly, my maternal and paternal grandfathers suffer from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s respectively, and seeing the devastating effects provides my motivation to work with the law to make stem cell therapy common practice. As a family member, and a potential patient myself, improving the quality of life for individuals suffering from these diseases is of