A slight turn on the course focus knob gave a precise image. Every miniscule cell that defined life could be seen through the lens positioned on the eyepiece of the microscope. Views of stem cells represent a fresh breathe of hope for the people of science. But does everyone else share the same perception and excitement? As it stands on the fence, stem cell research has been the highlight of most science journals and articles, dividing the ‘for’ and ‘against’ communities around the world. It is a debatable issue tainted with its own success and flaws since the 1800’s. People are questioning its importance in the medical field and if stem cell research is one that follows the ethical values of the people.
According to Medical News Today, stem cells are defined as a class of undifferentiated cells that are able to differentiate into specific cell lineages such as the skin, muscle and bone after a certain period of time. Found in certain tissues and parts of organs, stem cells were first successfully extracted as adult somatic cells in 1950 (Ronald and Kerridge, 89). It remained as the only type of stem cell until the discovery of embryonic stem cells developed from a hamster in 1988. This was the very discovery that staged as a catalyst for those who were against stem cell research due to its source of extraction. Embryonic stem cells are usually produced in vitro after the fifth day of the embryo’s development (Thomson, 1145). Embryonic stem cells are primarily harvested during the blastocyst phase of embryological development. A blastocyst phase is a complex cellular structure that is composed of approximately 200 cells. Its flexibility and versatility characteristic is what scientists consider as a gem. The main goal of studying of stem cell research is to determine the mechanisms involving cell differentiation and the ability of embryonic stem cells into specialized cells that could be used for treating diseases and life-threatening injuries. Scientists and medical professionals find these exceptionally challenging to work with adult stem cells instead of embryonic stem cells simply because adult stem cells have a lower longevity and give rise to only a limited type of cell line. Bettelheim stated that the finding of embryonic stem cells brings medical research to the edge of a new frontier especially when it comes to organ transplant or treatments for brain diseases (Bettelheim, 1067). The cells serve as a valuable tool for curing illnesses such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. A person suffering from Alzheimer’s disease would have a relatively smaller brain mass due to the degradation of nerve cells and brain tissues. Healthy new cells produced from stem cells could replace the source of such tissues (Clemmitt, 706). Electrical and chemical signals would once again be regenerated allowing the brain to function well than before.
The act of pledging your organs for donation seems to be more than a humanitarian work these days. People are willing to pay thousands of dollars to obtain an organ either from a relative or a deceased stranger. Every day, an average of 20 people die while waiting for an organ transplant and every 10 minutes, someone is added to the national transplant waiting list. Adult stem cells obtained from the bone marrow of the patients or embryonic stem cells from a laboratory would have the ability to regenerate into the desired organ or tissue which can then be transplanted into the patient (Hanna, Audit, and Arneodo 35). Using stem cells, scientists have come up with a new way to create blood vessels in mice, which is often used in cardiovascular surgeries. The vessel is known as a graft and is used to create an alternative pathway for blood flow, which is known as a bypass (Friedrich, 681).
There are approximately 172,910 people in the United States that are diagnosed with leukemia on a daily basis. Leukemia is a progressive disease in which the body produces and excessive amount of leukocytes (white blood cells) suppressing the production of normal blood cells. Treatments for blood related diseases have been made available by culturing hematopoietic cells. Hematopoietic cells are adult stem cells found in blood streams and bone marrows that could produce and divide into individual red and white blood cells. A specific concentration of the hematopoietic cells would be injected into the blood stream of the patient, hoping that the regenerated blood cells would balance out the ratio of red and white blood cells. The author of a science journal, Richard T.Maziarz, stated that hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT) is the only curative treatment option for a wide-range of high-risk diseases (1671). Most treatments could be performed with either autologous (patient’s own) or allogeneic (matched donor) stem cells (1672). With stem cells, there is now a possibility that cancer patients would no longer have to solely rely on aggressive treatments like chemotherapy.
The future is looking exceptionally brighter with the discovery of stem cells. Due to its ability to differentiate into any type of cell, tissue and organ, there have been suggestions from medical researchers to use stem cells as a substitute for animals and human volunteers in drug testing. Animal rights organizations supported the suggestion because it only seemed more ethical to use a ‘non-living’ grown organism for experiments rather than animals that could endure pain. Most pharmaceutical companies are now introducing stem cell technology for drug discovery and testing. A much more accurate and precise response could be observed when a chemical compound is applied to a healthy human stem cells compared to having the chemical applied onto a laboratory mice. It is a known fact that animals do not own the same complex biological system or a similar genetic expression to begin with and even primates that are considered to be relatively closer to us, human beings as a species based on evolutionary traits does not necessarily trigger the same metabolic reaction. Drug testing on stem cells are therefore well thought-out to be a better approach for both ethical and medical reasons.
An intuition that stem cells could lead to a revolution in the medical field does not simply cut through these days. The public has learned to doubt and challenge the facts that had been laid out by the science community. In the case of stem cell research, ethical concerns arise from the use of embryonic stem cells and the process in which the cells are extracted through the destruction of a human embryo. The method of disaggregating the blastocyst’s cells prevents the further development of a possible human life. To some, this may seem as an unethical and immoral act just as that as killing an innocent person, who has no ability to dictate his or her own fate. The question of when does the human life begin and when should it be protected by the law of justice has been highly controversial and have sparked a debate in most parts of the world. There have been various answers derived from different points of view linking to abortions, survival of the embryo and the risk of losing a potential cure for many diseases.
The basic principle behind the argument that it is unethical to destroy a developing embryo is that if it is impermissible to kill an innocent human being under a conscious mind, it is therefore impermissible to also kill a human embryo, which is an innocent human being intentionally. The laws of equating the importance and the ‘weight’ of one thing to another acts as a basis to this argument which is sufficient enough to question the ethics behind stem cell research. The general view of those who oppose the use of stem cells in research is that life begins to exist once the first cell of a zygote is formed after fertilization. As a matter of religious faith, human life begins at conception and does not depend on the days of growth or development. A zygote possesses all the necessary epigenetic to sustain biological processes involving self-directed growth into an infant and therefore should be treated as a human being. However, there are others particularly scientists who argue that the human embryo is too early ahead from being a human being simply because an embryo are a group of homogenous cells that do not regulate vital functions such as breathing or excreting. Thus, disaggregating a blastocyst cannot be equated to the killing of a human being.
While the central argument surrounding stem research is about the value of embryos, there are other ethical issues that are much broader and complex that should be addressed. With the view that embryos are just like any other growing human and therefore have the same moral status and rights at all stages of their lives. It is an eligibility to own this right and cannot be violated under any circumstances. Some may argue that despite the human embryo being considered as a living human being, however the embryo does not have the same moral status or prerequisite for a right to life. We associate fictional animals as seen in films or commercials as having the moral status of a person because they are given cognitive traits, feelings and emotions that is usually associated to humans. Embryos do not have the capacity for similar association and therefore do not necessarily have the right to life (Warren, 43).
Fertility treatments so often produce spare embryos that are either donated to other infertile couples, scientific research or are discarded. Being discarded signifies the end of the embryos survival and is similar to being donated for scientific research. This statement follows into a whole set of debate on which choice provides more benefit to mankind. The decision to donate an embryo for research is only ethically permissible if the decision was made after the initial decision was to discard them. The decisions to discard the embryos are the cause of their death, and research is just a manner of death. Those ‘doomed embryos’ are given the opportunity to help others before they are killed because death is imminent at this point no matter which pathway they are allowed to take based on the decisions made. As expected, there are still voices of disagreement from those who are onboard the ‘pro-life’ team, stating that researchers have a choice to continue storing those unwanted embryos or donating them to infertile couples, ensuring the survival of a possible human life. Unfortunately, that leads to the violation of the law and human rights, because the individual whom the embryos are obtained are given the ultimate decision to either discard the embryos after the procedure or be donated to other couples. Using an embryo that belongs to someone else for a purpose that is not known to him or her could possibly be regarded as a crime. The outcome of whether an embryo is to be allowed to live or to die depends on the individual who donated the embryos. So the choice on whether to donate or destruct the embryos is not in the hands of researchers.
The argument on whether it is ethically permissible to benefit from the death of a person goes back to other research and medical procedures. Organs of drunken driving and murder victims are so often used in organ transplant surgeries to benefit patients (Robertson, 5). The concept of benefiting from embryonic stem cells in research is analogous yet stem cell research gets more objections and is often scrutinized. Perhaps it’s the word ‘embryonic’ that people tend to correlate to a human infant that causes a controversial stir. If there are regulations under which a researcher may not completely be involved in the derivation and the destruction of the embryos, then perhaps those who oppose the death of embryos could eventually come to terms with using stem cells in research.
Embryonic stem cells are derived from leftover embryos from infertility treatments and are often in excess. As mentioned above, researchers are able to comprehend the mechanisms of cell growth and differentiation based on these cells. Over the years, there have been breakthroughs in understanding tumor growth and mutations related to cell differentiation. However these studies are performed on clones of embryonic stem cells to fulfill the requirements of a standard research and not from different unused embryos. When an experiment is conducted, there should be a certain level of consistency with only subtle variations in the samples tested, in order for the results to be significant and justifiable. Stem cells like any other tissue cells differ from one individual to another in terms of immune recognition, and therefore would provide varying results. Hundreds and thousands of these stem cell lines are kept in a stem cell bank that allows researchers to simply pull out the required cells that they want to work on. The creations of these stem cells that involve cloning seem to leave an uncomfortable feeling within the non-scientific community. The perfection of cloning techniques requires many trial and errors, which increases the needs for thousands of embryos that will result in the exploitation of individuals that donated the eggs. The argument pertaining to this technique then brings up the question about recycling unwanted embryos from infertility treatments that does not comply with the ethics and moral values of the public. Embryonic stem cells are mass-produced and researchers now no longer have to depend on excess embryos.
Further issues emerge with the importance of using embryonic stem cells in research to study the human biological metabolism. The process of cell differentiation is different when observed in a petri dish outside of the human body (in vitro) than it is when the cells are intact inside the body (in vivo). Cellular processes work in such an intricate manner that the presence of a downstream or upstream pathway could change the entire regulatory metabolic activity. Cells normally grow and develop within the confined spaces based on their location in the body and receive extracellular signaling from neighboring cells. Tissues located at one end of the body may have the ability to dictate the function and development of other tissues at the other end of the body. Such environment cannot be duplicated in a petri dish and thus the significance of these researches is debatable.
Religious faith is also one of the biggest opposition to stem cell research. It is against most religion to allow the abortion of a human being no matter what the circumstances are and since five-day-old embryos are considered to be human, it is morally impermissible. Killing an embryo whether it is in a human body or in a petri dish, the value of life does not change. Since the creation of Dolly the sheep via cloning in 1996, the public was afraid of the possibilities that science could bring to the world. Cloning was seen as an unnatural act going against God’s will and frowned upon by many religious people. It didn’t matter whether a potential cure could come out of these researches, techniques used in stem cell research was everything but ethical.
With such strong ethical and moral values whether it is due to logical reasoning or religion, politicians are left divided in the matter of whether to pass the bill regarding the use of stem cells in research. As seen in August 2001, just eight months after taking over the office, President Bush restricted federal funding to embryonic stem cell research, despite the insistence from scientists. Bush explained his veto at an event that the bill supported ‘the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefit for others’ (Clemmitt, 699). In an article written by Edward Fallone, he talks about how influential one’s moral belief could be by stating that majority of the opponents of federal and state funding argued on how the democratic government of the United States should reflect the moral values of our population, a large portion of which to object embryonic stem cell research on embryonic grounds (247). Law and bills at some point left the research community stranded with the thought of whether to abandon a vital treatment or abide to the ethical views of the majority.
Researchers and the science community were aware that the main objection against embryonic stem cell research is due to the way it was derived and harvested. An extensive amount of time and money have been invested over the years to come with an alternative. In 2006, an alternative source to embryonic stem cells known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells was discovered in the lab of Shinya Yamanaka in Japan. iPS cells are adult cells that have been genetically engineered to imitate embryonic stem cells by expressing specific genes and its subsequent factors like turning back the molecular clock of a cell. Although it brought a light of hope to the science field by providing an unlimited supply of adult somatic cell, the buzz about iPS didn’t stay for long. iPS cells had a very limited differentiation capacity and were not able to a variety of tissue cells. Besides that unlike an embryonic stem cell, which has a longer life span, iPS cells tend to undergo premature aging even with the provided nutrient culture (90). In other words, despite the clever technique of turning back the clock in these cells, there are some issues like aging that is irreversible. So, researchers are forced to work with these cells in only a short period of time to avoid wastage, which could easily cost millions of dollars.
If stem cells are just like any other body cells, potential damage within the differentiation cycle could occur and the purity of these cells cannot be assured then. According to a journal written by Wyles, Brandt and Nelson, stem cells are said to experience DNA damage during the harvest process and is rather inevitable (20949). The damage made could disrupt any form of differentiation resulting in what’s known to be a ‘non-suitable’ cell. One response to that is whether such cells would be a reliable source for further research applications. As to achieve the quality control standards for a safe and effective research application, genomic stability of the stem cell lines is highly required (20956). The ability to ensure and guarantee that each stem cell is at its most healthy and stable state can be almost impossible, suggesting that the results obtained through these researches are therefore false.
It is a circular argument with endless debates no matter which side you’re on regarding this topic. When making a decision on where to stand and support, it is advisable to consider and weigh out the advantages and disadvantages of an issue. Ethics and moral values are subjective to each individual based on their culture, religion and upbringing, therefore affecting a person’s stance. To me, it is undeniably obvious that stem cell research carries both positive and negative elements. However, I’m convinced that the use of stem cells including that derived from embryos might just lead us to a major breakthrough in finding a cure for a life threatening disease. Over the years, we have benefited over the success of stem cell research through bone marrow transplants, sickle cell anemia therapy and even skin grafts. Introducing a regulation that allows medical and research institutions to share their stem cell banks can tackle debates like wastage of stem cells. There are definitely areas in which the research and its techniques can be improved, but without the support of the public, it can be quite challenging to pursue stem cell research.
As I consider all aspects such as scientific importance, practicality, legal issues and ethical values, it is absolutely clear that the benefit of stem cell research outweighs its negative elements despite the contradictions and rejections proposed by some groups of people. It is a research that is extraordinarily promising in ensuring a better quality of life of our human population. Even with its minimal flaws, I strongly stand by the fact that stem cell research is vital and is a worthy investment to be continued in the science industry.