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^ I don't care what the media or John Kerry think. I care about whether or not stem cells have value. Read my post and you '''will''' see, as you say, "logical" reasons for stem cell research.
^ I don't care what the media or John Kerry think. I care about whether or not stem cells have value. Read my post and you '''will''' see, as you say, "logical" reasons for stem cell research.
[[User:Cthx]]
[[User:Cthx]]
Stems cells are both difficult to work with and to understand. It may surprise some of you, but established embryonic stem cell lines have been around since the late seventies. The line I do some work with, HEK-293 cells, was established from a kidney from an aborted fetus in 1978, in the Netherlands. It's gruesome to think about, but HEK cells (HEK stands for human embryonic kidney cells) are used throughout neurobiology and electrophysiology for experimentation. The problem with stem cells is keeping them as stem cells - they like to change, depending on their environment. They also have a high probability of becoming cancerous outside of the body (ie in tissue culture), due to over expression of telomerase. We don't know much about what makes a stem cell differentiate, that is why so many of the original stem cell lines established in the US are useless now - they became contaminated, or differentiated. How we get more stem cells is a difficult question - arguably much of the research that could/would use human stem cells could use those of chimpanzees, as they are so genetically similar to us. Personally I think anything that would be thrown out otherwise (medical waste, cord blood, unused IVF embryos) should be used to establish more stem cell lines, as cracking the stem cell differentiation puzzle will hopefully solve more lives than it could ever harm.
Stems cells are both difficult to work with and to understand. It may surprise some of you, but established embryonic stem cell lines have been around since the late seventies. The line I do some work with, HEK-293 cells, was established from a kidney from an aborted fetus in 1978, in the Netherlands. It's gruesome to think about, but HEK cells (HEK stands for human embryonic kidney cells) are used throughout neurobiology and electrophysiology for experimentation. The problem with stem cells is keeping them as stem cells - they like to change, depending on their environment. They also have a high probability of becoming cancerous outside of the body (ie in tissue culture), due to over expression of telomerase. We don't know much about what makes a stem cell differentiate, that is why so many of the original stem cell lines established in the US are useless now - they became contaminated, or differentiated. How we get more stem cells is a difficult question - arguably much of the research that could/would use human stem cells could use those of chimpanzees, as they are so genetically similar to us. Personally I think anything that would be thrown out otherwise (medical waste, cord blood, unused IVF embryos) should be used to establish more stem cell lines, as cracking the stem cell differentiation puzzle will hopefully solve more lives than it could ever harm.
[[User:AWHall|AWHall]] 16:09, 20 May 2008 (EDT)
[[User:AWHall|AWHall]] 16:09, 20 May 2008 (EDT)
== Embryonic-No, Stem Cells-Yes ==
A a religious person, I oppose abortion and the murder of unborn babies. However, there is no doubt that stem cells are very important. This article here lists many sucesful uses of non-embryonic stem-cells. These are from bone marrow or embilical chords after birth. They kill no one and work as effectiveley as embryonic stem cells.
The article: [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0876/is_91/ai_n15338777/]
[[Category:Essays]]
[[Category:Essays]]