Embryonic Stem Cells

Written by Chloe Harrison

Stem Cells are cells that can be taken and made into anything. There are 3 types of stem cells: Embryonic, Adult and Induced Pluripotent. The one I would like to talk about is Embryonic. “Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent stem cells derived from the inner cell mass of a blastocyst, an early-stage embryo. Human embryos reach the blastocyst stage 4–5 days post fertilization, at which time they consist of 50–150 cells.” (1)

9-week Human Embryo from Ectopic

Pregnancy [by Ed Uthman, MD] (2)

The embryonic stem cells have many uses. Since they are stem cells they can be used to make several different kinds of cells. For example they can be used to make new heart or nerve cells. We can then use these cells to study diseases. “The biotechnology company ACT is also using human ESCs to make cells for patients with an eye disease: Stargardt’s macular dystrophy.” (3)

To obtain these embryonic stem cells the doctors and scientists have to get an embryo, and kill it. They then have the cells they needed. This sounds totally horrible, I know, but most of the time they use the embryos left over from fertility clinics. I am still definitely not ok with the use of embryos for stem cell research let me get that straight right now! I don’t think its right to use a tiny little baby to save other people’s lives and that is what I will be talking about in the next few paragraphs. (5)

My position, on using embryonic cells for stem cells, is that I’m against it. I don’t think that we should be using tiny humans to save other humans.

The people that need the stem cells are going to be dead soon and the babies have a whole life time to live. No human has ever been cured by embryonic stem cells[G1] so why keep testing if it’s not working? We could also use animal embryos that are very closely related to us, for example chimp embryos!

So some people have been saying that the embryo isn't really a human because it’s only a few days old. That isn't really true. It is life, it is a human being, maybe it hasn't grown up fully yet but it’s still there, its growing and its living. If you could see that baby grow up and see what they accomplish, would you want to see them die before they could experience any of that? What if that baby was the next Albert Einstein or the next president? We would never know.