Stem+Cell+2

Stem Cells Definitions: Blastocyst: A fertilized egg after several days of cell division. Who? • US Gov • Private Labs • National Institutes of Health • Religious groups Where? . • USA • UK ' • Singapore What? Stem cell research is legal however federal funding only goes to adult stem cell research Why? • Fetal or embryonic stem cells are taken from female eggs. • thousands of eggs are simply thrown away every year by fertility clinics, which could be used for research • To some people, taking stem cells from a fetus or embryo amounts to unethical exploitation of human life, and healing one life does not justify destroying another • An adult stem cell is an undifferentiated cell found among differentiated cells in a tissue or organ • The primary roles of adult stem cells in a living organism are to maintain and repair the tissue in which they are found. • Adult blood forming stem cells from bone marrow have been used in transplants for 30 years. • Bush originally justified his position by claiming there were "more than 60" stem cell lines for researchers to work with, however most of those line are unusable do to contamination(mouse cells) • Embryonic stem cell research is not illegal. . Existing regulations only restrict the funding activities of the National Institutes of Health. The NIH can't fund embryonic stem-cell research except with stem-cell lines approved by the president. But scientists can use private funding to perform embryonic stem-cell research. • Extracting embryonic stem cells from the blastocyst destroys the embryo. Some religious and other groups believe human life begins at conception, and therefore are ethically opposed to embryonic stem-cell research. • Christians believe life begins at conception, Muslims and other groups do not. It could be argued that religion is influencing policy • No one has yet published successful results in a peer-reviewed medical journal — a step required for scientific acceptance and confirmation, that anyone has been cured using embryonic stem cell lines. • There has been no objections to date of the using of adult stem cells • Increasing evidence shows embryonic stem cells are difficult to control and preserve. When transplanted into experimental animals, these cells generally continue this untamed behavior, with a tendency to form tumors • private investors have avoided backing ESC due to the wait perhaps 10 years for commercial products that very well may not materialize and because they're spooked by the ethical concerns. Hence the push for federal funding • 2002 RAND Corporation Survey, 400,000 frozen embryos are stored in fertility clinics. • 88.2 percent of the embryos are reserved for future attempts at pregnancy. » Only 2.2 percent are to be discarded and 2.8 percent have been slated for research • August of 2001, the president designated $250 million toward adult stem-cell research. When? At least ten years before actual benefits could be put into use and any return on investment could be seen