Sickle Cell Anemia is a disease in which the sufferer's red blood cells, in stead of being the usual donut shape, are shaped like sickles. These cell are much less efficient at transporting oxygen. Using stem cells, these disease could be cured by using stem cells to create normal red blood cells. Unfortunately, the only way to get stem cells is from human embryos. At least until now.
A Japanese scientist named Shinya Yamanaka has developed a way to change ordinary skin cells back into stem cells. He takes ordinary skin cells and adds a virus to them that reverses the genes that are switched on, changing them back into stem cells. Unfortunately, the virus he used can cause cancer. A scientist at M.I.T. tested created stem cells on mice who had Sickle Cell Anemia. He was able to cure all of them. He prevented them from getting Cancer by removing the gene that caused cancer after creating the cells. This is a major breakthrough in medicine.
Acknowledgments: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0305/03.html for information
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Stem Cell Research
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I think this is really hopeful and it's really good that we're still making advances in science that are extremely beneficial! Hopefully this works as much as we hope it does.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with 14lee-mcdermott, however, I feel that the cons are a large factor.
ReplyDeleteI think that it would be great to use stem cells to cure certain diseases however i agree with aliza, the cons are very devestating. We would not want to cause more cancer and do not want to kill embryo's.
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