Stem cells are believed to possess great medical potential, but its controversy has never stopped. Scientists are trying to explain their studies with human health and medical development.
Recent years have witnessed an upsurge of stem cell research in the biological world due to its great significance in scientific and biomedical studies and in commercial prospects. Basic research, as well as clinical research and trials, has developed rapidly.
Stem cells, as a kind of pluripotent cells with the ability to self-reproduce, exist in embryos, fetal tissues, umbilical cord blood, and some tissues of adult bodies. Especially, embryonic stem cells taken from early embryos have the most potential for differentiation.
If scientists can accurately understand the conditions and mechanisms for differentiation of stem cells into different tissue cells, they can culture those cells in vitro, and then transplant them into patients to repair damaged ones, or even implement organ development for transplantation in vitro.
“This is undoubtedly great news for patients with Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, myocardial infarction, diabetes, and various cancers, immunodeficiency.” Said a senior scientist of Creative Biolabs, a leading service provider of stem cell research.
Although it is foreseeable that stem cell research will definitely improve scientists' understanding of life and various life-threatening diseases, which will lead to the further development of life science and medical technology, it has been controversial since the beginning.
Among the researches, ones on human embryonic stem cell and its clinical trials have caused the most ethical controversy. Human embryonic stem cellsused for research can be obtained by extra gametes or blastocysts during in vitro fertilization, natural or voluntary aborted fetal cells, blastocysts obtained by somatic cell nuclear transfer technology, voluntarily donated germ cells and embryos made for research purposes, etc. The main disagreement lies in this question: Is the embryo a potential human or is it a cluster of cells available for research?
There is currently no international consensus on whether and how to conduct stem cell research. Even within a country or region, the perceptions of different groups differ. In addition, a country's policy may not be static and unchanged. The most typical manifestation is the evolution of stem cell research policies in the US.
In 1995, the Republican-led U.S. Congress enacted a ban on federal funding for any research that would lead to the destruction of embryos, which is known as the famous Dickey-Wicker Amendment. By 1999, the Clinton administration stated that embryonic stem cell research was outside the scope of this law. However, in August 2001, Bush delivered his first televised speech since he became the president, announcing a new policy to limit federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research. And then, in March 2009, Obama signed an executive order to lift some restrictions on federal funding. Before signing the order, Obama said that embryonic stem cells can help understand and even cure some serious diseases, and their potential, although not fully known, should never be underestimated.
The whole society still has a strong demand for stem cell research. For many patients with degenerative incurable disease, stem cell research is seen as the only hope. Opponents oppose these studies for the same reason, which mainly focuses on the murder of potential life and human dignity. Proponents argue that early embryos lack a nervous system and sensation, thus it is acceptable to use early embryos for scientific research and medical treatment, and they are trying to make the controversy switch from the moral level into the medical treatment level.
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