Stem Cell Research

Stem Cell Research Debate

Imagine a world where people didn’t suffer from everyday common diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer. This may sound like some wildly exaggerated story from the future but it is becoming more of a reality.

Today in America there are millions of people with these diseases and many other debilitating bodily malfunctions. These people continually suffer from things that may be treated more effectively with stem cells or may possibly even be cured. Under what circumstances, if any, is embryonic stem cell research acceptable?

A stem cell is young cell that can be coaxed into developing into most of the cells found in the human body. Some researchers think that stem cells offer the greatest relief from suffering since the development of antibiotics. Stem cells can be extracted from very young human embryos most usually taken from unwanted surplus frozen embryos taken from a woman that had undergone laboratory fertilization. When a woman undergoes this process she is given medication that causes her to produce around two dozen mature eggs. These couples are then faced with several questions, have the extra embryos thrown away, donate the embryos to another infertile couple, donate the embryos for research, or have the embryos preserved at very low temperatures. Generally there are very few parents willing to donate their embryos to other couples due

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to emotional reasons. People generally are not willing to receive the embryos either because of the same reasons; also because once the embryo is frozen and thawed it has a low chance of producing a successful pregnancy. Keeping the embryo frozen can also be expensive so, most choose to have the embryos just thrown away. There are currently hundreds of thousands human embryos in storage.

Although many favor the use of these cells, a minority of pro-lifers and a majority of pro-life organizations strongly object to the use of embryos in research. These pro-lifers are mainly Roman Catholics and conservative Protestants. They feel that an embryo that is a few days old is a human person that has a soul. Extracting the