Stem Cell Research

Stem Cell Research

Since the 1960's Stem Cell Research have been conducted on humans. Over the past several decades there have been groups both for and against the continuation of this research. Stem Cell Research has to ability to find cures for several of the life threatening diseases and to give individuals a chance to live longer lives.

In the early years of the research there were areas of key success. The first recorded success of using stem cells was in 1968 when treatment of a patient with severe combined immunodeficiency disorder (Jacobs, 2011). Since then the research has lead to successful treatments of immune deficiencies, Leukemia, Lymphoma, and various genetic diseases.

From 2001 through 2007 the biggest part of the oppositions of the research came from pro-life organizations. They argued that "Human embryos were human beings at the earliest stage of existence, and to destroy them to create stem cells is akin to harvest organs from newborns" (Bottum, 2008). This fight still continues because there are still pro-life groups out there that think that this is a form of wrongful doing and they believe that we as humans are trying to play god. What seems to make matters even worse is that president George Bush was the first president to all the use of federal funds to continue the research.

In March 2001 several lawsuits was filed relating to stem cell research. The lawsuit was to stop federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research. At that time the planiffs, a non-profit organization claimed that the NIH guidelines authorizing such research violated the legislative ban found in the appropriations rider which prohibits federal funding for research which a human embryo is destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death (Duffy, 2002).

In August of 2010 the court ruling issuing an injunction that blocked the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research in the U.S. because it was in violation of the Dickey-Wicker amendment (Haile, 2010). The Dickey-Wicker amendment was established in 1995 in regards to prohibit the Department of Health and Human Resources from using appropriated funds for further research of human embryos. President Obama issued an executive order in March 2009 that removed the restrictions against federal funding of stem cells (Haile, 2010).

Within the last decade the United States has lost some ground in the stem cell research to other countries in Europe and in Asia. With the research being conducted from more regions of the world it has greatly expanded the scope of Stem Cell Research. Each of the researching countries has their own policies and laws that they follow in order to continue their research.

The research in China prohibits the reproductive cloning but allows the creation of human embryos for research of therapeutic purposes (Pew 2008). The down side to their laws and polices came in the form of international criticism saying that their regulations were to relaxed. Although they have received such criticism they have not changed anything and they still allow the research to continue.

In India business is booming so well that they created stem cell banking, which allows patients to store stem cells for future medical treatment (Pew, 2008). At this point and time the guideline are for clinical trials of stem cells. Stem cells only been approved for the use in bone marrow transplants.

Singapore has recruited researchers from around the world to come in and do research on stem cells. Some of the incentives were authorizing them to use, for therapeutic purposes, embryos that are no more than two weeks old (Pew, 2008).

In France they have prohibited reproductive cloning for research purposes. They were granted a small window

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