Embryonic Stem Cell Dilemma

Saving lives, by taking others away

1.
2.

3.
4.

Help changes someones life, and restores

damaged cells
Because, although embryos deserve respect,
they are not morally equivalent to human
beings. according to policy analysts Jonathan
Moreno and Sam Berger of the progressive
Center for American Progress
Great potential in finding cures for diseases
such as diabetes and sickle cell anemia
Potential cancer treatment

1.
2.
3.
4.

Harm/death to embryo
People believe embryos have the same status
as adult humans
As soon as an egg is fertilized, the resulting
embryo deserves full respect thats accorded
to a child or adult
Experiments do not guarantee any benefits to
human life

Current Events & News

PBS- March 2009:

President Barack Obama cleared the way for federal tax dollars to fund expanded embryonic stem cell research. Obama said funding such research
is morally necessary because of the potential to find medical cures. The Catholic and other churches see the embryo being destroyed equivalent to
killing an innocent human. On the other hand, Jewish denominations and mainline Protestant churches believe the benefits of the research
capabilities outweigh the cost of embryo death.
Fortune- September 2012:
Robert Lanza is the chief scientist of Advanced Cell Technology. It was Lanza who published a paper in The Lancet earlier this year detailing the
results of early clinical trials involving the two women suffering from macular degeneration. A UCLA ophthalmologist injected each woman with
50,000 retinal cells derived from human embryonic stem cells, and according to the paper, both claim to have better vision as a result.
Huffington Post- March 2016:
Getting past the fact that there will inevitably be emotional and legal conflicts between the multiple forms of parents created in the process of
heterologous embryo transfer a larger question looms: is it ethical, both legally and theologically, to bring life into the world outside the normative
standards of the ages? The scientific technology currently exists that would make the birth of a child with three sets of parents with legal claim to
him or her completely possible. Further, embryo adoption is not the stuff of science fiction novels. Embryo adoption is a
thriving industry.Bringing a child into the world by non-traditional means, such as heterologous embryo transfer (HET)
increases the complications exponentially, begging questions such as what defines a parent (genes, love,
pregnancy and delivery, etc...) and who does the child belong to?

Scientific Journal Articles

New England Journal of Medicine (2000) Regression of Metastatic Renal-Cell Carcinoma after Nonmyeloablative Allogeneic Peripheral-Blood
Stem-Cell Transplantation.
Studies sought to induce analogous graft-versus-tumor effects in patients with metastatic renal-cell carcinoma by means of nonmyeloablative
allogeneic peripheral-blood stem-cell transplantation.Nonmyeloablative allogeneic stem-cell transplantation can induce sustained regression of
metastatic renal-cell carcinoma in patients who have had no response to conventional immunotherapy.
Cell.com (2009) High-throughput cellular microarray platforms: applications in drug discovery, toxicology and stem cell research.
Cellular microarrays are powerful experimental tools for high-throughput screening of large numbers of test samples. Miniaturization increases
assay throughput while reducing reagent consumption and the number of cells required, making these systems attractive for a wide range of assays
in drug discovery, toxicology, stem cell research and potentially therapy. This emerging and multidisciplinary approach offers new opportunities for
the design and control of stem cells in tissue engineering and cellular therapies and promises to expedite drug discovery in the biotechnology and
pharmaceutical industries.

Marketing Materials
Stem cell therapy has not yet been approved. Research studying the benefits and
capabilities of stem cell therapy are in the works. Due to laws, the therapeutic use
of stem cells may or may not be something that will actually be implemented in
this new era of medicine.

Vocabulary

Embryonic
Blastocyst
Cell
Cusp
Embryo
Therapeutics
Biotech
Therapy
Degeneration

Sources
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2009/03/13/march-13-2009-stemcell-dilemmas/2444/
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200009143431101
http://fortune.com/2012/09/28/the-great-stem-cell-dilemma/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/whitny-braun/heterologous-embryotrans_b_9481750.html
http://www.cell.com/trends/biotechnology/abstract/S0167-7799(09)00070-5?
_returnURL=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%
2FS0167779909000705%3Fshowall%3Dtrue&cc=y=