Stem Cell Therapy Pros And Cons

The ability to generate new muscle and tissues, expedite the healing process of wounds, repair nerve damage, and treat neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s all encompass the incredible benefits of stem cell therapy. These unique, life-changing cells are capable of specializing themselves into any part of the body that needs it. Stem cells originate from multiple sources: adult bone marrow, adult adipose tissue, placenta, umbilical cord, and embryonic cells. This last source remains the center of debate in biomedical ethics issues. With the origin of human life and abortion remaining a major topic of question in today’s society, obtaining stem cells from embryos begs a major argument. One side of the debate claims that

The most affirming argument for the continuation of such research is that they are the most effective type of stem cell and have already proven to have incredible healing properties. California’s Stem Cell Agency provides multiple examples of how the cells are making their way to treat diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Leukemia, stroke victims, spinal cord injuries, liver cancer and heart disease. However, adversaries to this research still remain wary of the extent to which the research will go. Some believe that doctors will use IVF treatment solely to obtain embryonic cells, or use therapeutic cloning to create their own embryos. However, the methods as to which doctors and researchers obtain these cells proves to be completely ethical. The researchers have the best interest of their patients in mind. Their goal of stem cell treatment is to provide people a new and very effective way of treating diseases that have been previously thought of as incurable. These powerful, embryonic stem cell lines are only made from blastocysts that have been given to them with full consent. The cells were never to be used in a mother planning to have a child, and they would have most likely been destroyed. The argument that retrieving these cells from embryos borders on abortion is irrational. A human life is not guaranteed when the blastocysts are created or even implanted into the mother. It is too premature to call the IVF cells that are generated in lab human beings, and therefore the ethical issue over their use does not exist. A researcher at Santa Clara University, Lawrence Nelson, provides an excellent metaphor for this, “Embryos outside a woman’s body have no potential in the true meaning of the world, just like a seed in the packet from the store does not have the same potential as the seed in fertile, tended ground” (para. 6).