Stem Cell Research

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Imagine you have a family member or friend sick. That person has a heart disease; it’s the muscle tissue in their heart. Wouldn’t you want every bit of help you could find to cure that person and make them healthy again? New studies with stem cell research show that this type of study may find cures for many diseases including transportation of healthy heart muscle cells.
Recent reports on the isolation and successful culturing of the first human pluripotent stem cell lines have generated great excitement and have brought biomedical research to the edge of a new frontier. In order to understand the importance of this discovery as well as the related scientific, medical, and ethical issues, I need to first explain what stem cell research is and how it works.
Stem cells can divide for indefinite periods in culture and to give rise to specialized cells. They are best described in the normal human development. Human development begins when a sperm fertilizes an egg and creates a single cell that has the potential to form an entire organism. This fertilized egg is totipotent, meaning that its potential is total. In the first hours after fertilization, this cell divides into identical totipotent cells. (show first picture) This means that either one of these cells, if placed into a woman's uterus, has the potential to develop into a fetus. In fact, identical twins develop when two totipotent cells separate and develop into two individual, genetically identical human beings. Approximately four days after fertilization and after several cycles of cell division, these totipotent cells begin to specialize, forming a hollow sphere of cells, called a blastocyst. The blastocyst has an outer layer of cells and inside the hollow sphere; there is a cluster of cells called the inner cell mass.
The outer layer of cells will go on to form the placenta and other supporting tissues needed for fetal development in the uterus. The inner cell mass ...