Embryonic Stem Cell Research
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ls are less versatile. Stem cells have been used experimentally to form the blood - making cells of the bone marrow and heart, blood vessel, muscle, and insulin-producing tissue (NIH 8 -9).
The National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) explains that human stem cells have been extracted from surplus fertilized embryos produced during in vitro fertilization (the technique for conception of human embryo outside the mother’s body) procedures (2). Some scientists have used embryos that were fertilized especially to produce stem cells, and in so-called therapeutic cloning a nucleus from a patient’s body cell would be inserted into an egg that has had its nucleus removed to produce a blastocyst whose stem cells could be used to create tissue that would be compatible with that of the patient (NBAC 2).
The University of Wisconsin – Madison states that the first embryonic stem cells to be isolated were extracted by British researchers from mouse blastocysts; the first human stem cells isolated were extracted by American scientists in 1998 (1...