Saving Lives but at what Cost?
Strand of DNA
In this day and age, the focus on human involvement in health and science has grown, sparking debate among the people. A topic of focus has been the idea of funding stem cell research. Within this, it is necessary for people to realize that stem cell technology needs to be further developed in order to increase longevity. The power of stem cell technology has finally been realized. The ability to take a stem cell, known as the building block of the body, and manipulate said cell to perform a certain function is substantial. It is through this that we have the potential to treat our nation’s diabetes epidemic along with heart-related and blood-related diseases such as leukemia and lymphoma.
It has been widely acknowledged that the main drawback of stem cell technology lies within its ethics. “Harvesting an embryonic stem cell from the placenta results in a backlash from one side,” Dr. Thomas Wyatt noted. He made it clear that he understands both sides of the debate. Those arguing against stem cell technology tend to lean more toward religion. These people find it unfair and unethical to create an embryo simply to destroy it in order to create these stem cells. Of these people is Hassan Abdi, who believes that it is not right “to destroy one life in an attempt to save another life”. Abdi believes that messing with nature will end up coming back to haunt us later on. The fix to this issue of ethics is to use adult stem cells rather than embryonic ones. Using adult stem cells would be an ethical fix as obtaining these cells would be as simple as taking donations of blood or bone marrow. While adult stem cells cannot be completely modified yet, they can offer regenerative therapy for the time being while more funding is provided for engineering these adult cells.
Sources
https://www.unmc.edu/stemcells/educational-resources/importance.html
https://stemcellres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13287-019-1165-5
Nasser "Nas" Abdi, Grade 12. Interests/hobbies include fishing, basketball, hiking, spending time with friends and family, and late-night car rides. Nasser...
