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Stem Cell Research Informative Essay

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MAGIC CELLS

BRANDON STAUDACHER
MRS. PEARSON
RESEARCH WRITING
MARCH 30, 2017

For many people, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurological issues are a difficult obstacle. However, imagine a world where these problems could be solved. Scientists believe that one day, that could be our world. With the use of stem cells, it would be possible to replace cells that have been killed by disease. Stem cell research has been around for about 30 years, but hasn’t been widely practiced due to the many people who have major ethical problems with it and the ban in which removed federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Since a large majority of stem cell research involves the use embryos, a lot people …show more content…

Coming up with ton’s of information, I realized that I needed to narrow down my search a bit. In the beginning, all I was looking for was some information that would inform me on what stem cells are, in order to get a better understanding of what I was in for. After narrowing down my search, I came across a chapter from the “Journal of Medical Ethics” by T. Hviid Nielsen. This chapter, which was titled “What happened to Stem Cells?” was a very good start to my research, it gave me more of a basic understanding of what stem cells are and only a small portion on what they do. The deeper I read into this source, the more it began to focus on stem cells being unable to break the controversy that comes with them. After finishing reading this source, I had many more wonders about this topic like what else can these stem cells do, and what makes them so …show more content…

This quote is a perfect comparison of the importance of stem cells, but before we can talk about stem cells, we must first cover the cell. Cells are the fundamental units of life and make up every living thing, There are millions of cells in the human body, but “...as different as these cells are, they all have the same origin; the totipotent cells of the human embryo.” (Lakshminath 179) This is not the only importance that these totipotent cells hold, each cell also holds the possibility of developing into an embryo, this is where stem cells come in.
There are a few different kinds of stem cells. These different type of stem cells depends on where it came from. As of now, there are only a couple sources for stem cell’s. The first kind of stem cells are adult stem cell. These adult stem cells can be obtained from specialized tissue in both children and adults. Since these cells are older, they are further along in the differentiation process, meaning they can only change into a few types of cells instead of the 200 that comes with embryonic stem cells. This is also called being pluripotent. (Miller

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