Stem cells

[Tonio]

Any thoughts on the moral implications of stem cell use? Everyone seems to assume that stem cells can only come from embryos. That's not the case.

My wife and I donated our daughter's umbilical cord blood to a company that uses stem cells to treat leukemia and Hodgkin's disease. Much easier than transplanting someone's bone marrow.

[jimmy]

Tonio,

Not really sure how the process works but don't "stem cells" have to come from a "stem" of some kind? I would guess there's some use they had for the umbilical cord but if that's all it took, wouldn't there be NO debate on the matter? I mean, everyone gets rid of their umbilical cord.

[Tonio]

"Stem" cells don't refer to a physical stem. They're actually the ancestors of blood cells and many other cells. The name refers to their ability to evolve into other types of cells. That's why stem cells are so useful in medicine.

60 Minutes ran a story about a boy who was cured of sickle-cell anemia with a stem cell transplant. He now has a different blood type than when he was born!

[jimmy]

Weird, I didn't really know that....

Yeah all the stuff they can do with it sounds great. Seems like it may be the next step in medical treatment and lead to cures for a lot of prominant illnesses. However, if you can get those types of cells from umbilical cord blood, why is there the debate about using embyros? Or is it just that each "stem cell" must come from a specific body part?

[Kyle (Premo)]

The umbilical cord doesn't contain as much material as they can obtain from killing and extracting it from the entire fetus.

Simple, albeit brutal, economics.

[jimmy]

Well, I haven't done much research on it, but the ratio of usable cells in the rest of the body compared to the umbilical cord HAS to be about 10,000 to 1 to make it not feasable. RIght now, they are mired in legal battles, moral issues and how many umbilical cords get "tossed" each day? I'd say however many babies are born each day, wouldn't you? (unless people are weird and want to hold on to that stuff). So they must be pretty useless to be pushing for such a controversial alternative.

The other thing I wanted to say was that, since abortion is legal at this point, why not allow stem cell extraction from that fetus? I mean, it sounds harsh but it's just getting tossed anyway and it's going to be aborted whether right to lifers want it to or not. You may as well get something good from it. Especially with all the benefits that seem to be possible with this research.