Political View on Stem Cell Research and the Use of Umbilical Cord Stem Cells

Political View on Stem Cell Research and the Use of Umbilical Cord Stem Cells

Background of the politics

In the United States stem cell research has become a very heated topic over the past several years. It all began in 2001 when President Bush declared that scientists who receive federal research funds—by far the majority—could work only with a handful of stem cell lines. The White House said that more than 60 usable embryonic stem cell lines were available. But in reality the number is closer to nine due to genetic problems such as being contaminated with by viruses as a result of being developed with mouse feeder cells. Some points that Bush made in his state of the Union address were to urge Congress to prohibit "all" human cloning "because no human life should be started or ended as the object of an experiment." This can be seen as an ethical stand point but many researchers believe that the president is using it as a cover up to his own person/religious beliefs. Also legislation was introduced in both House and Senate to ban the use of "somatic cell nuclear transfer"—the cloning technique by which Dolly the sheep was produced—to create a living human organism "at any stage of development." Within a few days of its introduction, the House bill had attracted more than 100 co-sponsors. These actions and others are making it very difficult for stem cell researchers to improve the technology and advance in this field of medicine. Although there are some competing bills that would prohibit human reproductive cloning but would permit nuclear transfer to create embryonic stem cell lines for research its not very helpful as of now because embryonic research is a huge portion of the stem cell research done in the U.S. as of now. Although it is good in a way because now researchers are basically being forced to find new ways to make stem cells and finding new lines of cells to use in the process.

In a more global view many other countries are jumping ahead of the U.S. in the research of stem cells. Such countries as South Korea, who was the first to announce that they created the first human embryonic stem cell custom for an individual patient, are taking major steps in the goal of patients growing their own replacement tissue to treat diseases. This step is vital because a persons own immune system is less likely to reject tissues from it own DNA, than from donated embryos, a reason why umbilical cord blood cells are becoming more popular to save for the future of the babies being born. Also another advancement that is continually in progress is that South Korea has developed a technique to save cells by being more efficient in their implantation into human cells, such that previously it took as much as 242 cells where the Koreans have been found to use just about 20 eggs per successful try.

As South Korea advances in the stem cell research many other countries are joining in. Such countries include Great Britain, Japan, Germany and India, Here lies the fact that as these countries advance in this research the U.S. is being left farther and farther behind in the medical technology.