Stem Cell Research

The Patients' Coalition for Urgent Research (CURe), a consortium of three dozen national nonprofit patient organizations, reports that over 100 million Americans suffer from illnesses, some of them terminal, which may be treated by medical advancements in the area of stem cell research. The list of ailments includes cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, osteoporosis, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, severe burns, spinal cord injuries, and birth defects. While scientists continue to look for treatments and cures for these diseases through new medicine, innovative surgical techniques, and gene therapy, perhaps the most promising research is being encountered on the frontier of human embryonic stem cell research.

From the beginning of this research in animals in the early 1980's, stem cells have been celebrated for their nearly infinite potential in application towards the alleviation, and ultimately the eradication, of many branches of human illness and disease. Animal stem cell research and preliminary human stem cell research indicates stem cells as a source of self-renewing, undifferentiated cells that have the ability to differentiate into organs, nerves, blood cells, skin, eyes, hair - basically, any tissue or cell found in an adult mammal.

Because stem cells have the ability to differentiate into every kind of cell contained in the human body, their possible therapeutic effects have the potential to help hundreds of millions of people worldwide. However, where there is the most promise, there is also the most controversy, and the bridge between life and death relies largely on the compromise between science and politics. The case against human embryonic stem cell research rests upon the core argument that embryonic stem cells are derived from human embryos and, as such, are protected by ethical principles against human experimentation. Whether or not stem cells represent a viable source of human life recapitulates the same debate as the abortion controversy: the argument about when human life begins. However, issues surrounding stem cell research are even more complicated than abortion, given the technology's likely capacity to save the lives of millions of already living human beings.

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