Stem Cell Research

Stem Cell Research

Stem cells have recently been the subject of controversy ever since they were first discovered in 1981. Martin Evans is the person who first discovered stem cells, while he was researching at Cambridge University. While he was researching, he first noticed stem cells in 1981 and ever since then, there has been many advances in the medical field. The reason that I chose this topic is because stem cells are an interesting topic since they are surrounded with controversy, and also because it is important to know and understand the history behind them, as well as some positives and negatives about stem cell research. In stem cell research, the positives greatly outweigh the negatives because stem cell research helps people fight against all types of diseases and infections.

Stem cell research has very many positive things about it. For instance, stem cell research has shown a lot of promise helping cancer patients fight against their cancer. Also stem cell research has helped people who are blind recover their eye sight. Stem cells have a variety of uses and all of them are beneficial to mankind. Stem cells have been shown to help patients who suffer from diseases such as alzheimers or even parkinsons disease, there has even been times when people who suffered serious spinal injuries have benefited from stem cells and have fully or almost fully recovered from their injury. Despite all these positive things coming out of stem cell research, there is still controversy surrounding this subject. That is due to the fact that stem cell research uses human embryos and the embryo usually gets destroyed in the process. Many people see this as the wrong thing to do. Not only is destroying a human embryo a bad thing to do, there can be some serious conditions caused by stem cell research. Sometimes the stem cells can grow too rapidly and cause a tumor to become present.

There are a variety of different ways that stem cell treatment can be done on a patient. Before the procedure has even begun the patient must undergo different tests to see if their body is physically prepared for the treatment. These tests usually last only a few days and if the patient has passed these tests then they move on to the next step. The next step usually involves stem cells being harvested from the donor. In order for stem cells to be harvested the patient has to undergo a special procedure called apheresis. However before the procedure can begin the donor is injected with a growth factor to help increase the amount of stem cells in the body, which makes the stem cells more abundant and easier to collect. During apheresis blood is drawn from the donor and then the blood is put inside a machine which separates the blood into different parts, which include stem cells. After this procedure is over the patient