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Stem Cell Legislation What are stem cells? Stem cells are highly specialized cells. They are also known as pluripotent stem cells. These cells are formed as a part of a blastopcyst which occurs at the beginning stages of human embryo development; at this stage they are unspecialized and can be made into specialized cells. They have the potential to be developed into 130 types of human tissue. The fact that these cells can be cloned to replicate human tissue is a major breakthrough for scientist and for treating many medical diseases including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, diabetes and many more. The issue with stem cells is that a human embryo has to be produced for the stem cells to be obtained. These cells are removed from abortion clinics and from in-vitro fertilization clinics; now that is where the controversy comes in. There is controversy both within the Democratic and Republican parties on the subject of Stem Cells however, the Democrats are more leaning for support of the issue but there is more division between the Republicans. The people who are against abortion are opposed to stem cell research. This is because of the means of obtaining the eggs which is from destroyed embryos. The biggest organization which is opposed to stem cells reproduction is the Catholic Church. They have also been opposed to in-vitro; their argument being that it is unethical to use embryos that are not fertilized. In previous years, by federal law, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) banned the funding of human embryo research. The research had been funded privately until 2001 when President Bush announced on August 9th that federal funds would be available to support limited human embryonic stem cell research. Research can only be done on 64 existing stem cells lines that have already been produced as of the date of the

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