Stem Cell Research

I think the government has taken a stance against it but I don't doubt its being researched. I think the potential of stem cell therapy is great and I'm all for it

 

There's currently a way to get stem cells from discarded foreskins, and from adult cells. They don't have to process fetuses anymore. Last I read about it, the problem was that reverted cells with no direction tend to mutate pretty quickly and will become useless tumors (unless the use is cancer). However, when the kinks are worked out, you can get some skin cells scraped from your arm and you'll be able to get your organs or muscle tissue cultured in a lab from it, in case you get sick or hurt.

 

Im not sure but I believe Obama has reinstated stem cell research, when a woman gives birth the umbilical cord is full of stem cells and in many places your parents can pay for it to be frozen and kept stored after you are born in the hospital in case there is a problem with the child after birth or something of the like.

I believe the big issue with stem cell research was the problem of mothers aborting their children and the aborted fetus being used due to it also being full of stem cells, however I believe new research has show the umbilical cords hold more stem cells so the feud has died down a bit.

 

The US government has funded embryonic stem cell research since the Clinton administration.

Embryonic stem cell research involves the creation of stem cell "lines", meaning that researchers extract the cells from an embryo and induce the extracted cells to reproduce. If you do it right, you can produce large numbers of cells from a single embryo, but of course the extraction involves destroying the embryo.

Under the law that has been in place since the 90s, the federal government cannot fund research that involves the destruction of human embryos. However, if privately funded researchers are able to create a viable line of stem cells from an embryo, the government can fund research on those stem cells. They just can't fund the creation of new lines, because that process destroys embryos.

Bush signed an executive order in 2001 that banned federal funding for any new stem cell lines that would be created after his ban went into effect. However, during his term hundreds of millions of dollars of federal money did go to fund research on the cell lines that had been created prior to his ban.

Obama's executive order in 2009 reversed the Bush order. Now, we're back to where we were under Clinton. Federal money can fund research on embryonic stem cell lines that are created by privately-funded researchers, but it cannot go towards the creation of new cell lines.