Health Care Issue: Stem Cell Research

Health Care Issue: Stem Cell Research

Introduction

In this paper we are going to analyze the one of the very critical issue of health care, stem cell research. Stem cell research has been the topic of many debates recently. The upcoming elections have once again brought stem cell research to the front of the line during debates. Some people believe that stem cell research is unethical while others feel that it will save millions of lives. The purpose of this paper is to show how politics and stem-cell research are intertwined with one another and that they do relate with politics.

Discussion

Within the past few years, stem cell research has taken huge steps and new developments in medicine. However, within the past few years, the debate on stem cell research has become more and more heated between supporters and opponents of this controversial research. It has become an ethical dilemma within these two groups. Is this research ethical? Is refraining from the research ethical?

There are many advocates of stem cell research. Many of these advocates include scientists, doctors, and people with illnesses. The people who do advocate stem cell research have good reason to do so. Stem cell research opens up many new possibilities in medical treatment and advancement. First, being that embryonic stem cells are blank cells, they can be transformed into any other type of cell. This means that doctor's can grow from scratch anything from heart muscle, to bone marrow, even brain tissue. Also new skin can be grown for burn victims. Limbs and organs will be grown, in order to eliminate expensive transplant surgery from hard to find donors ("Wisconsin" 1). "Many diseases, such as Parkinson's disease...occur because of the death or dysfunction of just one of a few cell types. The replacement of those cells would offer life-long treatment" ("Wisconsin" 1). By using stem cells, doctors would be able to easily replace these missing or damaged cells that would cause Parkinson's disease. Stem cell research will also eventually give us the opportunity to study the developmental events that can not be studied directly in a human embryo. Scientists will be able to see the causes of major birth defects and will eventually be able to treat or prevent them ("Wisconsin" 1). Another advantage of this research is the ability to test millions of potential drugs and medicines on those stem cells. By using stem cells for this testing, we will eliminate the need to use human or animal testing.

Along with every person who supports something however, comes someone who opposes it. This is very true with stem cell research, as it has its fair share of opponents many of them being pro-life and many having Christian values. These opponents of stem cell research have good reasons to oppose it. First opponents believe that embryonic stem cell research is very ethically controversial. Many people believe that life beings at conception, so people believe that scientists are destroying a human life in the process ...