The Christian Tradition Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

The Christian Tradition - Essay Example Such worldwide reports as noted by Dr. Amin Abboud are: In Dusselford, in July 2001, German doctors reported that a patient’s own bone marrow adult stem cells were used to regenerate tissue damaged by a heart attack, improving his heart function. US doctors have taken adult stem cells from the brain of a patient with Parkinson’s disease and reimplanted them resulting in an 83% improvement in the patient. Washington Medical Centre treated 26 patients with rapidly deteriorating multiple sclerosis, twenty patients stabilized and six improved. Israeli doctors inserted adult blood stem cells into a paraplegic woman’s spinal cord. She regained bladder control and the ability to wiggle her toes and mover her legs. Surgeons in Taiwan have restored vision to a patient with severe eye damage using stem cells from the patient’s own eyes (2). However, with their highly optimistic battle to fight diseases, developing wise and ethically sound decisions in the field of m edical science is very challenging especially in the midst of increasingly complex technology. While adult stem cells therapy has proven to be effective in treating diseases, medical scientists’ ongoing research of developing new field of regenerative medicine through pursuing other ways of harvesting stem cells resulted to formation of the new avenue called â€Å"Embryonic Stem Cell†. This recent development has stirred considerable controversies. But why this becomes so controversial? Stem cell research has shown great promising treatment in some devastating diseases. Taking a closer look at the different kinds of stem cells and defining how they are derived will help us understand why this subject is so controversial. As reported by the National Institutes of Health in the United States (NIH), adult stem cell is an undifferentiated cell found among differentiated cells in a tissue or organ such as bone marrow, blood and blood vessels, brain, skeletal muscle, skin, h eart, teeth, liver, and others. It has the ability to renew itself and can differentiate into tissues to generate some or all of the other major specialized cell types of the tissue or organ other than those from which they came. So, the main roles of adult stem cells in human body are to maintain and repair the tissue of which they are found. Actually, doctors have been using stem cells to treat certain blood disorders which involved transplantation of bone marrow, which is rich in blood-forming stem cells (Homepage chap 4). Thus, adult stem cells are obtained from living humans, either adults or children, wherein the process of extraction is not harmful. Stem cells are being taken from their bone marrow, blood and blood vessels, skin, spinal cord, brain tissue and also from umbilical-cord blood and the placenta after the birth of a child. Additionally, NIH explained that adult stem cells isolated from blood and bone marrow are called hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), which have the ability to continually self-renew that made them responsible for production of billions of new blood cells each day. Since scientists have developed sufficient knowledge for using them as a therapy, doctors are routinely using hematopoietic stem cell transplants in treating cancer patients and other diseases related to blood and immune systems (chap 5). NIH additionally noted that normally amount of stem cells in