What are stem cells? Stem cells, put simply, are the building blocks of life. When you were conceived, your body was entirely made up of stem cells. Stem cells can replicate indefinitely, and can become any type of cells, like brain cells, heart cells, muscle cells, and skin cells. Did you ever wonder how your body grew from seemingly nothing? The answer is in the miracle of stem cells.
What is stem cell research? Stem cell research is based on the idea that if you inject stem cells into a part of the body that is unhealthy, or broken, they may be able to repair it. Amazingly, it works.
Is stem cell research incompatible with personhood? The media – and indeed, much of the public – have come to the conclusion that pro-life forces are against stem cell research, period. This is absolutely false! We are only against the types of research that destroys human life.
There is more than one type of stem cell research. This is the most important information about stem cell research that you must master if you are going to talk about this issue. There are several types of stem cell research: Embryonic SCR, Induced Pluripotent SCR, and Adult SCR.
Embryonic Stem Cell Research. The major differences in the 2 types of stem cell research are how the stem cells are obtained. With embryonic stem cell research, the stem cells are taken from three sources:
- Aborted fetal tissue. Abortion clinics make a lot of money by selling body parts of the babies they abort to medical research facilities and universities. One of the uses for these human body parts is harvesting the stem cells.
- Human embryos are cloned, and allowed to grow until they are between 7-15 days old. Then a doctor cuts the baby down the middle, and uses a syringe to extract the stem cells. This always kills the living embryo.
- Leftovers from in-vitro fertilization. The vast majority of couples using in-vitro fertilization to have a baby create excess embryos to improve the chances of one of them implanting and the excess embryos are frozen. Typically, couples don’t end up using these, so they either remain frozen, are adopted by someone else, or are killed for embryonic stem cell research.
Adult Stem Cell Research: Adult stem cell research utilizes stem cells from your body. Most people don’t realize that there are still stem cells in your body right now! The good thing about adult stem cell transplants is that your body is much less likely to reject them, than if someone else’s stem cells are injected into your body. According to the National Institutes of Health, there are currently 12 places in your body where stem cells can be taken and used to cure diseases. You can also get stem cells from placental and umbilical cord cells. When a baby is born, the placenta and umbilical cord are usually thrown away as medical waste, but they are packed with stem cells that can be used for research and to help others in a very similar fashion to donating blood. You can contact an organization in Atlanta called Babies For Life at www.babiesforlife.org and arrange to donate your babies’ placenta and umbilical cord, and they will freeze the stem cells for research.
Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. iPSCs are a type of pluripotent stem cell artificially derived from a non-pluripotent cell, typically an adult somatic cell. This is accomplished by inducing a “forced” expression of certain genes in the cell. iPSCs are believed to be identical to natural pluripotent stem cells, such as embryonic stem cells, but the full extent of their relation to natural pluripotent stem cells is still being assessed. iPSCs were first produced in 2006 from mouse cells and in 2007 from human cells.
This has been cited as an important advancement in stem cell research, as it may allow researchers to obtain pluripotent stem cells, which are important in research and potentially have therapeutic uses, without the controversial use of human embryos. iPSCs are typically derived by transfection of certain stem cell-associated genes into non-pluripotent cells, such as skin cells. Transfection is typically achieved through viral vectors, such as retroviruses.
After 3-4 weeks, small numbers of transfected cells begin to become similar to pluripotent stem cells. iPSCs were first generated by Shinya Yamanaka’s team at Kyoto University, Japan in 2006. Yamanaka had identified genes that are particularly active in embryonic stem cells, and used retroviruses to transfect mouse fibroblasts with a selection of those genes. Eventually, four key pluripotency genes essential for the production of pluripotent stem cells were isolated.
In November 2007, a milestone was achieved by creating iPS from adult human cells; two independent research teams’ studies were released – one in Science by James Thomson of University of Wisconsin-Madison and another in Cell by Shinya Yamanaka and colleagues at Kyoto University, Japan. With the same principle used earlier in mouse models, Yamanaka had successfully transformed human fibroblasts into pluripotent stem cells using the same four pivotal genes with a retroviral system.
What has the research shown so far?
Embryonic SCR: So far, there have been 0 cures found from ESCR. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. In fact, there have been so few results from embryonic stem cell research that money from private investors is diminishing. Destructive embryonic stem cell research has a very low Return on Investment (ROI). One of the problems with embryonic stem cell research is that embryonic stem cells are too powerful for us to control. Sometimes they become the cells that they are engineered to become, and sometimes they don’t. This has even resulted in a man’s death in China when teeth grew in his brain.
Adult SCR: Adult stem cell research has had the opposite impact. It has cured patients with 72 different diseases so far! In fact, the British Medical Journal said that the need for fetal cells as a source of stem cells for medical research may soon be eclipsed by the more readily available and less controversial adult stem cells. The list of cured diseases is continually growing. The most recent list includes HIV/AIDS, spinal cord injuries, blindness, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, and leukemia.
Induced Pluripotent SCR: The viral transfection systems used insert the genes at random locations in the host’s genome; this is a concern for potential therapeutic applications of these iPSCs, because the created cells might be susceptible to cancer. Members of research teams consider it therefore necessary to develop new delivery methods.
Public Opinion. Some polls have said that the American people support embryonic stem cell research, but the results are deceiving. The results of a poll depend on the questions being asked, and these polls didn’t ask the right questions. Instead of asking, “Do you think we should support research that could cure diabetes,” we should be asking “Do you support your tax dollars being used for medical research that would kill early human embryos?” Polling conducted by International Communications Research, and their results were significant: 70% oppose embryonic stem cell research, when they understand what it really is.
So what needs to be done? Since Georgia is a champion state for medical and scientific research, ethical guidelines must be established and followed. Legislators and research institutions must be held accountable to advance sciences that are safe and ethical. There are limitless benefits to exploring adult stem cell research and may be the key to securing permanent cures for diseases like cancer, AIDS, and others. In fact, just this year the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) found that more funding in California and Maryland had been allocated for non-embryonic stem cell research than for embryonic stem cell research. This goes to show that the scientific community is recognizing what the pro-life movement has been saying for years: destructive embryonic stem cell research is not only unethical, it does not work.