Embryonic Stem Cell Research Debate

Medical research has reached a point where it causes controversy and this is not the first time that a controversy revolves around medical research. Animal research has and still causes arguments within the medical field as to know whether or not it is morally correct to use animals as test subjects in medical research. The latest debate in the field is about whether or not embryonic stem cell research is morally acceptable. As the name implies, embryonic stem cells come from embryos. Stem cells can be described as blank cells, which means that they have yet to be assigned a purpose; they can become any kind of cell. When using stem cells to cure patients, they are given a purpose. Embryonic stem cell research should be allowed. To support …show more content…
The main reason that is given against embryonic stem cell research is that it requires the death of human beings, this is not a relevant argument. The argument is based on the hypothesis that embryos are human beings, however, this is the same argument made by those who are against abortions. Albeit, a legislation had been passed in the United States in order to prevent the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, five years later a second bill was passed to allow in vitro fertilized embryos to be used for stem cell research. An argument that was often used in favour of the bill was that these embryos would be “discarded” were they not used for research purposes (Hulburt 80). This is a key idea of embryonic stem cell research, these embryos would not be given birth to anyway, even if they had not been in vitro fertilized, if the parents want to donate the embryo for research purposed, chances are that they would have aborted their embryo even if they had not given it to research labs. Looking at the argument from a new angle, one may ask if these embryos should be given birth to. If they are given birth to, the world’s food supplies would have to be divided amongst many more humans. On top of going through malnutrition, these humans would suffer of the world’s overpopulation which would help spread illnesses much faster and kill many more humans. Therefore, as these new humans should have to live in a world where food is …show more content…
By regenerating organs many diseases would become irrelevant, no more important than minor injuries. Parkinson’s disease affects nerves in the human body and reduces the dopamine level, however, tests on lab animals have shown that within five months, these animals could recover normal levels of dopamine in their bodies. These results are the same as those obtained through fetal nerves transplants in patients suffering of Parkinson’s disease, the treatment currently used to ease symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Although the results are not conclusive as to whether or not it may cure Parkinson’s disease, it does alleviate the symptoms and a cure has yet to be found for it (Park). This is one instance of embryonic stem cells being able to cure diseases for which there is close to no cure but there may be many other. Results may be biased by medical researchers as there is yet to be a standard method to measure the efficacy of stem cell treatments. Nevertheless it is believed that the embryonic stem cell treatments may become a norm a few years to cure cardiac diseases. Meanwhile embryonic stem cells have to be shown to be safer and be “superior” to other forms of stem cells (Brunt 330-331). Diabetes is another disease that is hard to cure. It is only controlled with insulin which helps to prevent complications which include, but are not limited to neurovascular and cardiovascular diseases. Although pancreas transplantation has