Embryonic Stem Cells Essay

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Pages: 4

Stem Cell Essay
Imagine a bus full of children falling victim to a fatal car accident and they barely make it out alive. Most of them lose the use of their legs due to serious spinal injuries. These children have a chance of walking again with the use of embryonic stem cells. By only using a few embryos, dozens of children would be saved. Embryonic stem cells have the ability to differentiate into almost any type of cell, thus solving spinal injuries, cancers and other cell related diseases. Embryonic stem cell research is ideal due to the potential cures they could create, their ability to multiply by growing them in a lab and their ability to be used to test pharmaceutical drugs. Due to all these points, I support embryonic stem cell research.
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Embryonic stem cells are harvested from human embryos once they reach the blastocyst stage. It has about 100 cells with a majority being stem cells, which double in 2-3 days. When these stem cells are harvested, they can be grown in a lab by providing them with nutrients as if they were in a uterus. This could double the volume of embryonic stem cells. Studies have shown that it does not take too many stem cells to cure an injury or disease such as tumors. This is due to the differentiated cells replacing the tumor cells and then multiplying to repair the damage. This means one embryo could cure multiple people. This method could repair organs that are failing rather than placing the patient on a waiting list to procure a scarce donated organ. By increasing the volume of embryonic stem cells in a lab, it stops the need to destroy more embryos in order to procure more stem cells. This method could appease religious fundamentalists and decreases the moral issues attached to destroying embryos. By increasing the output of stem cells from one blastocyst, it could increase the amount of patients receiving stem cell therapy. This is a big advantage for embryonic stem cell