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Can We Afford to Not Explore Stem Cell Research?

An Argument in Support Stem Cell Research

John P. Bailey

English Composition, ENG101V2A

Professor Rosenberg

August 8, 2011

Abstract

In recent years, a battle has resurrected between fundamentalist conservatives and science and medicine. Fundamentalist-minded religious factions have made a hard line stance that embryonic stem cell research is destructive towards life. Stem cells can be derived from the destruction of human embryos. Fertility clinics, the largest provider of stem cells, supply for research embryonic cells and in-vitro-fertilized embryos. The scientific world has asserted that embryonic stem cells have a regenerative nature and possess the potential to repair almost every type of damaged tissue. In terms of medical advancement, the future benefits of stem cells are tremendous. While examining the sources of these embryonic stem cells and their alternative disposal, I will assert that ignoring embryonic stem cell research is tantamount to neglectful suffering and death. The possibilities of the associated medical advancements are enormous.

Can We Afford to Not Explore Stem Cell Research?

An Argument in Support Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Embryonic stem cells are in the vanguard of research with the greatest potential in the biomedical world of today. Stem cells have unheard of qualities that strike the medical field as vastly unique. “Understand how stem cell can regenerate themselves without exhaustion (a property called “self renewal”), and yet when called upon, differentiate into highly specialized cells of complex tissue, thereby maintaining and restoring tissue and organ integrity” (Herold, 2003) Stem cells do not all originate from embryos. Some are actually obtained in an extraction process from

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