The Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Stem Cells in Health Researches

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Stem cell or also known as mother cell is an undifferentiated cell that able to renew itself by cell division or induced to be specialized cells of somatic tissues (Stemcells.nih.gov, 2015). There are two types of stem cells that have been used by scientists, somatic or adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Somatic stem cells are found among cells in tissues or organ to repair and maintain the tissue that they inhibit. While embryonic stem cells come from embryos in the pre-implantation stage that was grow in the laboratory which also known as in vitro fertilization, and germinal layer that able to generate any line of cells for indefinite time (RamosZúñiga et al.

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, 2012). Because of this, embryonic stem cells is one of the main studies researches health purposes and also debates and controversy In 1868, a German biologists Ernst Haeckel was the first to use the term stem cells to describe a fertilized egg.

Although, it is not until 1981 where two scientists, Martin Evans and Gail Martin that able to extract pluripotent stems cells from embryonic stem cells (Stemcell.

childrenhospital.org, 2015). Nowadays, scientists used embryonic stem cells from existing cell lines, spare embryos from left over in vitro fertilization or created embryonic cells through somatic cell nuclear transfer method (SCNT) (EuroStemCell, 2015). SCNT involve therapeutic cloning that was used to create Dolly the sheep, the method of removing nucleus from a somatic cell and implanted it to a donor egg with removed nucleus, this it to stimulate the egg to divide, after the egg develop into an embryo, the scientist will retrieve the inner mass cells and cultured in a special media to generate embryonic stem cells (Explorestemcells.

co.uk, 2015) and if the cultured cells able to multiply until crowd the dish, the cells will be removed and planted into new fresh dish to be cultured. However, this method cause the embryo to die which is the reason of oppositions.

Recently a harvesting techniques called altered nuclear transfer (ANT) have been successfully developed. The procedure of alternation of nucleus is similar to SCNT, however in ANT the nucleus will be altered beforehand to prevent the growth of embryo, yet allow to generate pluripotent stem cells (WB, 2015). Pluripotent, the main reason scientists pursue and study stem cells, the ability to give rise different type of cells, other than that it give scientists a chance to observe and learn the growth of a fertilized egg to adult, it also help to understand how diseases and birth defects occur and develops. In industrial, it help to test and create new drugs, which also help in cell-based therapies (EuroStemCell, 2015). Furthermore, stem cells have been used as key research to cure cancer; potential usage in neuronal therapy, such as Alzheimer and grow organs from stem cells for transplantation. The advance of technologies, studies and researches of stem cells could help to improve life. Nevertheless, manipulation and production of embryonic stem cells are one of the controversial arguments in this modern day. Not only it brought in ethical issues but also risks that still unpredictable. The studies of embryonic stem cells might have be done for years, yet only recent years that it had been used as medical treatments, thus, the long term risk of stem cells still unknown. In addition, the studies and usage required a lot of embryos that the scientist opt to create embryos through ex profeso just for research purposes, this cause uproar for people who against experimental of embryonic stem cells in the first place, they argue it against the human rights for the embryos that could be grow into a person (Hansen, 20023).

Further experiment proof there is 20% results of tumours grow involve the stem cells transplant in experimental sample, not to mention the probability in defects migration that exist in the stem cells to the patients (Ramos Zúñiga et al., 2012). This has yet include arguments from public, that claim it is immoral to create and kill the embryos for research purposes and ruin the human rights to live. In the end, the governments either band the research on embryonic stem cells or create rules and regulations of amount limitations in using embryos for stem cells research. In the end, there are advantages and disadvantages in using embryonic stem cells for research. Through stem cells we can create a treatment to cure serious illness such as cancer and diabetes and restore cells that badly damage, including the ability to grow organs from stem cells provide bigger opportunity for people in dire need of transplantation. Besides that, stem cells open a new gateway for scientists to study the human of development and growth from an egg. However, embryonic stem cells cause questions of morality surrounding the sources of the embryos. In addition, embryonic stem cells treatments available required a lot sum of money to prevent rejection of the injected cells and the host cells (Icr.org, 2015), including the long term risk that still unable to fully observed and known.