Science/Technology

Stem-cell Research is Approved

Medicine has greatly improved over the last couple decades. Technologies have been created to counteract cancer and give people artificial body parts. Well here’s one of the newest medical breakthroughs yet, stem-cell research.

13 lines of embryonic stem-cells were recently approved for use in stem-cell research. Also, 96 different lines are currently under review.

Stem-cell research uses embryonic stem-cells to discover how the human body works. A stem-cell is capable of morphing into any cell in the human body. This ability would allow them to be used to repair parts of the body that cannot regenerate themselves, such as heart tissue and liver cells. In turn, the new body cells could potentially cure or provide breakthroughs for diseases, such as diabetes and Parkinson’s disease, which occur because cells are not functioning properly. Because 8 percent of the US population had diabetes in 2008 and over 500,000 Americans are affected by Parkinson’s disease, stem-cell research would benefit millions of citizens of this country.

This research will be funded by tax payer dollars. So far, the government has given 21 million dollars to stem-cell research lines. The reason for funding multiple lines is that some embryonic stem-cells are better at transforming into any one particular body part than others.

However, there are ethical dilemmas in the use of stem-cells because in order to obtain an unlimited supply of them, scientists must kill a day-old embryo. The conflict in this practice is that many Americans consider killing an embryo to be the same as killing a human being. The government even passed a federal law some years ago that prevented taxes to be used for this research.

Hopefully, stem-cell research will become more widely accepted by the American population and will yield important breakthroughs. All these scientists need is tax payer money and the support of the nation.

© 2010 The Daytime.