Why in the world is there the huge push to support the use of embryonic stem cells when non-embryonic stem cells are:
1. Readily available
2. Just as effective, and
3. Not ethically troubling?
I saw so much I broke my mind
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3 comments:
ARE they just as effective? My understanding was they aren't.
They are. Initially (like 5+ years ago) it was thought that only embryonic stem cells were totipotent (able to generate into a complete organism/differentiate into any of different cells/tissues) and pluripotent (having capacity to affect multiple organs/tissues). (What the real distinctin between these two is, I'm not quite sure, but basically we want stem cells to be both to be optimally useful).
Anyways, research on non-embryonic stem cells - which is funded, and has led to most of the promising results attributed to stem cells generally - has proved them to be just as usable as embryonic stem cells.
I thought differently too, but in the past year I've seen/heard so much about these research results (in Bioethics, Advanced Health Law, from senators and even Ed Pellegrino - the chair of the President's council on bioethics), that pretty much, I'm as certain as I could be without doing the experiments myself.
Oh, and the real reason there's still the huge push for embryonic stem cells?
Money. Lots and lots of money.
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