Stem Cells – The Ideal of Medicine

The famous scientist William J. Mayo (1928) once said “The aim of medicine is to prevent disease and prolong life, the ideal of medicine is to eliminate the need of a physician. ” With the the help of technologies available and being developed today we are closer than ever in achieving this goal. Stem cells are of mainly two types, the adult stem cell, which are of small quantities in many organs such as the bone marrow, fat, and skin. A problem with this type of stem cell is that they do not have as much ability to become different specialized cells, for example bone marrow cells can not create nerve cells (Westphal, 2003). The other source of stem cells more widely used today is the embryonic stem cell which is taken from blastocyst that are five days old.

These stem cells, although much more controversial to many people, due to the reason that they are derived from a embryo which is what eventually becomes a human are more useful for many more circumstances due to their ability to become any specialized cell (Westphal, 2003; Callahan,2005; New scientist, 2017; Thompson, 2017). Stem cells can be used to conduct research on development, to find cures to prevent diseases, regrow organs, and to treat existing diseases. Approximately 1 million people in the US suffer from Parkinson which is a disease that kills cells in the brain making it hard to move for many patients (Florida hospital, nd. ). A study was performed on monkeys with Parkinson's where the moneys were injected with dopamine producing brain cells, derived from stem cells and the outcome of the experiment was that 40-55% of the monkeys moved more effectively and the effects of the injection lasted for two years (Thompson, 2017).

Type one diabetes which accounts for 5% of all diabetes diagnosed today in the US (Stanford children's health, and. ) is increasingly becoming more prevalent among children in society today, and the disease itself works by the immune t-cells attacking cells in the pancreas which results in à decrease of insulin, which is responsible for controlling blood sugar. Type one diabetes patients typically have to rely on insulin for their whole life. À study in brazil gave stem cell infusions to fifteen people which caused the cells to produce new immune cells that did not lower the count of insulin by attacking the pancreas (Aldhous, 2007). In conclusion Stem cell research even though controversial has many positive benefits to our society and is ultimately needed to treat and reduce suffering from diseases that can become preventable in our lifetime.