Louisiana Right to Life Federation > Human Embryonic Stem …

As we have indicated, embryonic stem cells, on their face value, are truly a beautiful and amazing part of human development since they are the foundational cells for every cell in the human body. And because of the pluripotency of embryonic stem cells and the corresponding supposed hope for medicinal use, researchs have sought to isolate these hESC. However, because theses stem cells are a necessary part of the embryos development, isolating the hESC necesitates the destruction of the embryo, which turns what was beautiful into a disgrace.

In human embryonic stem cell research (hESCR), the beauty of the human blastocyst is destroyed for the sake of using these hESC to treat other diseases. The stem cells of the human blastocyst are removed, leaving the blastocyst dead and unable to continue its maturation process. The image at the right indicates this process.

These cells are then placed in a pietri dish and are encouraged to multiply undifferentiated until a stem cell line is created. Then, these lines are either immediately frozen for later experimentation, or they are experimented on to see how they differentiate into specific cells, at what rate the differentiation is done, and how the differentiation can be controlled.

While many scientists see hESCR as the holy grail of medicine, it is alarming to note that neither any treatments or cures have materalized through the use of hESCR. In fact, they omit that their is no timeframe as to when treatments or cures will materialize.

Many proponents of hESCR cite the lack of funding by President Bush as the reason no successes have come forth.

However, there are significant problems with hESCR:

Because of these two problems, researchers need to research more to diagnose these problems. To research more, scientists need more human embryonic stem cells, which, of course, means more destrution of embryos to obtain the stem cells.

Lets break down how scientists isolate hESC

This newly created zygotes cells divide and develops on the same path as the egg fertilized by the sperm, meaning in 7-14 days it is called a blastocyst. At this point, this cloned embryo can either be implanted in a surrogate mothers womb and carried to term, or it can be stripped of its embryonic stem cells and left to die. (mcc video- 5:49-7:31)

More:
Louisiana Right to Life Federation > Human Embryonic Stem ...