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Court-Moor School

What are Stem Cells?

Stem Cells are a unique type of cell that we all have in our bodies. They are undifferentiated, meaning they have not been developed into a cell that is designed to carry out a special job, like a sperm cell or a nerve cell.

Stem Cell Technology - A Good Idea or a Bad One? 

Arguments for:

• Can we save lives with this technology? What Scientists are most interested in are Embryonic Stem Cells, which have the ability to develop into any stem cell within the human body. This discovery can revolutionise the way that diseases are treated. For Example, if someone was suffering from a spinal chord injury, scientists believe they can take one stem cell from the patient's body, put it into an embryo and grow it and then take those stem cells back into the spinal chord, where they will grow into specialised cells that would repair and replace the damaged ones. This means, that scientists can cure all sorts of diseases like the example above in the same way. Projections show that it could save 128.4 million people just in the United States of America.
• Will researching this contribute to our knowledge of ths human body? The research and experimenting of Stem Cells will provide mankind with a huge amount of knowledge. For example, the reserach of genes can tell us which genes control which parts of our body. We could achieve this by removing a gene from a stem cell and seeing what effect it has on the person or animal. For example, if certain genes were removed from a mouse, it could change the colour of its fur.

Arguements against:

• Isn't there a danger of this power being abused? There is a concern of this stem cell research and technology being abused. To treat a diabetic,  we could take there DNA and from it, make an embryo, from which we could take the stem cells, which would be genetically identical to them. Clearly, somebody could decide then to take a step further and develop this into a their clone. Do we want to allow these emryos to be created? Also, Stem Cells can be used to change a person. For example, a diabetic can be made to be able to produce insulin. Could somebody use this to change people in other ways?
• Is the population an issue? If we do start using Stem Cells on humans, we will effectively be saving lives. But is this altering nature? We will soon come to a point, where there are too many people in the world. This is happening in some countries already, without the use of stem cells. There isn't enough land for all of the people in this world now, let alone when we increase the life expectancy. It might sound good now, but at some point, the Earth will be too small.

What Do You Think?

At Intech we constructed a poll before and after a series of presentations on Stem Cells. The results are below...