Scientists and medical doctors have spent years researching and developing new medical treatments to treat and cure as many diseases as they can, many of these treatments are controversial, but stem cells are one of the more controversial ones. Stem cells, both synthetic and nonsynthetic, have medical properties that will help decrease the percentage of patients who contract certain mental diseases and those who have suffered physical injury.

A simple definition for what stem cells are is that they are a type of “undifferentiated cells that are able to differentiate into specialized cell types” (Crosta). There are two types of nonsynthetic stem cells: embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. Adult stem cells, which are also called somatic stem cells, are valued for their ability to regrow indefinitely allowing them to heal injuries or in the near future “regenerate the entire original organ” that they were taken from (Crosta). Embryonic stem cells are valued as well but for a different reason. When they are harvested they are taken at a point when they can replicate into any type of cell in the human anatomy with the correct stimulation. This makes embryonic stem cells much more valuable than somatic stem cells because they can essentially be used to make any kind of cell needed to repair the human body. In short, embryonic stem cells are much more valuable than adult stem cells because they can “differentiate into more cell types than adult stem cells.”(Crosta) These non-synthetic stem cells are broken up into groups based on their “potential to differentiate into other types of cells.”(Crosta) These potency groups are as follows: “totipotent, pluripotent, multipotent, oligopotent and unipotent.”(Crosta) Embryonic stem cells are mainly thought to be pluripotent, which means they can “differentiate into almost all cell types” (Crosta) while adult stem cells can be broken up among multipotent, oligopotent and unipotent. Multipotent cells are cells with the “ability to differentiate into a closely related family of cells.”(Crosta) Oligopotent cells are cells with the “ability to differentiate into a few cells.”(Crosta) And unipotent cells are cells with the “ability to only produce cells of their own type.”(Crosta) The only cells that are considered to be totipotent are early embryonic stem cells before they are taken because they have the “ability to differentiate into all possible cell types.”(Crosta) This ability is what helps decrease the amount of time that patients spend sick or injured.

Synthetic stem cells are a new innovation on the idea of using stem cells for medical purposes. Scientists have only recently developed synthetic stem cells. This was accomplished by “researchers from North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University.”(NC State University) These synthetic stem cells were developed by “fabricating a cell-mimicking micro-particle from…a biodegradable and biocompatible polymer” (NC State University). They were then added to “harvested growth factor proteins from cultured human cardiac stem cells” (NC State University) after which “they coated the particle with cardiac stem cell membrane.”(NC State University) These new synthetic cardiac stem cells have been experimentally proven to repair cardiac tissue that was damaged by a heart attack. As of now, scientists have only tested these cells on mice and in petri dishes in a laboratory and the cells most likely will not be put into hospital circulation for a few more years. Since these cells are synthetic they “don’t have to be derived from the patient’s own cells” (NC State University) and “the manufacturing process can be used with any type of stem cell.”(NC State University) This makes synthetic stem cells much better than embryonic stem cells, in theory.

The arguments against stem cell research are many, spanning from moral and ethical reasons to religious reasons to medical issues. The first and most prominent problem that people have with stem cell research is whether or not it is morally and ethically right to harvest embryonic stem cells. The component that many people who argue this point need to consider is that the embryonic stem cells that are harvested are harvested from embryos that are stored and eventually disposed as extras from “In Vitro Fertilization clinics where…only one fertilized egg is implanted in a woman.”(Crosta) This position does sound truthful but it would also be unethical to let all the extra embryos stay unharmed until they die on their own because they will most likely never be put into other women. These extras will rarely ever be implanted in a woman having the chance to become a human baby so, from a logical standpoint, it makes sense to put the extras towards something that could potentially save lives. Even though these extra human embryos are destroyed they are being used to help save lives and to improve lives of injured patients throughout the world. A response to this argument from opposition is that the “parent of embryos stored in fertility clinics” can choose to “donate the embryos to other couples struggling with infertility.” (Rebecca) To this rebuttal argument, those in support of stem cells would ask what about the embryos that do not end up getting donated to those struggling parents? Unused embryos are frozen and stored allowing for essentially no biological processes to occur but it would still make more sense to put them to a good cause. 

Another argument is the religious position in which the “Catholic Church strictly holds that the destruction of a human embryo is unethical,” (Shannon) this view is held by many religious people. Religious ideals state that life starts at the moment of conception. In response to this people who support stem cell research state that because the embryonic stem cells are only harvested from “week old blastocysts” (Rebecca) they are “merely a cluster of cells and thus do not constitute a human being.”(Rebecca) One more thing that could be argued in support of stem cells is that scientists have been able to remove “a few cells from a mouse embryo and put the embryo back into a female mouse.”(Shafer) The result of this experiment was the birth of “a normal mouse pup” and the “embryonic stem cells.”(Shafer) This shows that a couple of cells could possibly be removed “from an embryo without harming it,” although scientists have not found a way to do this with humans yet (Shafer). With this finding, the argument stating embryos are being killed is proven false because of the new ways to extract stem cells and save the embryo. The morality and ethicality of the arguments against stem cells are fought on a very thin line that can be changed just by looking at it in a different way. The strongest argument the opposition has to use against nonsynthetic stem cells is that stem cells are extremely fragile when transporting and storing them and that scientists have also had to face the challenge of stem cells being rejected by the host body’s immune system and growing without stopping resulting in tumors. Although these positions are good points to argue, with the creation of synthetic stem cells they are starting to become obsolete because the new stem cells “do not amplify once implanted in patients” and they are “designed to bypass the body’s immune system in order to wipe out the risk of implants being rejected.”(Bodkin) All of these arguments were good arguments when scientists first started researching into the usage of stem cells in medical practice. Now that synthetic stem cells are being developed and gaining popularity these arguments are starting to lose their ground because of the synthetic version’s ability to do the same thing but without the risks of normal stem cells.

Another important aspect of stem cells to pay attention to is the multitude of medical benefits that come from using stem cells in treatments. One example of stem cells being used to miraculously help someone’s life, who would have normally been out of luck, is the case of Kris Boesen. Boesen “suffered a traumatic injury to his cervical spine” (Aldrich) when he was involved in a car accident leaving him “permanently paralyzed from the neck down.”(Aldrich) Luckily Boesen’s parent were informed that there could be a chance to help Kris. According to an article from the University of South California, “a surgical team…injected an experimental dose of 10 million AST-OPC1 cells directly into Kris’s cervical spinal cord in early April [of 2016]” (Aldrich) and within two weeks of the surgery Kris had improved. Amazingly a man who had every chance of being permanently paralyzed went through stem cell treatment and “three months later, he’s able to feed himself, use his cell phone, write his name, operate a motorized wheelchair and hug his friends and family.”(Aldrich) The AST-OPC1 cells are a special kind of cell made, specifically for these kinds of surgeries, from “embryonic stem cells by carefully converting them into…cells found in the brain and spinal cord.”(Aldrich) This is just one of many ways stem cells can be used to help heal people’s lives.

Stem cells are also on the road to being used to grow entire organs for transplant patients.  As of 2014 and up to present day as many as “16,000 ailing Americans are waiting to receive a liver transplant” (McGowan) but many do not receive the transplant they need because of the long wait list and shortage of livers that can safely be used. It is because of this fact that scientists began researching into different ways to solve the issue. In 2014, a scientist named Takanori Takebe “succeeded in generating mini livers [liver buds]…from stem cells that were taken from human skin.”(McGowan) Basically Takebe and his team of scientists “recreated the process by which a human embryo begins to form a functioning liver.”(McGowan) This new mini liver was then surgically placed in the body of a live mouse where it “exhibited many functions of the mature organ, such as metabolizing sugars and drugs.”(McGowan) After implanting the mini liver in the mouse the scientists found that “when they disabled the mouse’s own liver, the human buds kept the animal alive for two months.” (McGowan) Synthetic stem cells have also been used to repair damaged cardiac muscle tissue in a mouse. The synthetic stem cells were put into a “mouse which had suffered a heart attack” (Bodkin) and they showed “growth of cardiac cells.”(Bodkin) Once scientists have accomplished this same feat in humans people will not suffer after heart attacks like they do now, recovery will be much faster and safer.

One of the newest innovations of stem cell research is that scientists have been able to grow “formations of cells that mimic some of the brain’s regions” (McGowan) called brain organoids. The development of these organoids will hopefully help scientists “fix neurological injuries.”(McGowan) These cells could eventually be used to find the cause of diseases like Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s and by finding the cause scientists hope to be able to cure or prevent them all     together. Scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital have also been able to “create blood vessels in laboratory mice using human stem cells.”(Crosta) Yet another example of stem cells being used to treat patients is the use of hematopoietic stem cells (blood stem cells) to treat diseases like “leukemia, sickle cell anemia, and other immunodeficiencies.”(Crosta) On top of all the previous examples of uses and innovations of stem cells in present day, the possible future applications of these cells could prove to as beneficial as they are now.

Many of the future applications of stem cells are still a few decades from being able to be used in real medical practices but they are interesting nonetheless. One of these science fiction sounding applications is the ability to grow embryonic clones that would be the genetic copies of the donor for purposes of getting “tissues that could cure diseases, replace organs and heal injuries.”(McGowan) According to an article from Discover magazine, the process to developing these clones was not and is not an easy one. The first instance of researchers cloning a living thing was in “1996 when biologists first fused a mammalian skin cell with an egg cell, cloning Dolly the sheep.”(McGowan) The way the biologists accomplished this task was by a process called "somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT)” (McGowan) and it basically “replaces the DNA in an egg cell’s nucleus with the genetic material from the nucleus of a skin cell.” (McGowan) After the DNA has been switched, the process “tricks the egg cell to start dividing” (McGowan) like normal until you have a cloned embryo. Scientists were not able to accomplish this with human eggs until 2013 however. In 2013 a scientist from the Oregon Health and Science University named Shoukhrat Mitalipov found a way to make somatic cell nuclear transfer work with humans. Mitalipov’s process will put some people’s minds at rest because his process of growing human embryos does not “develop into a fetus.” (McGowan) Since 2013 newer ways have been found to develop stem cells but the stem cells that are made through somatic cell nuclear transfer are valued more “because they are genetic copies of the living person who donated the skin cells.”(McGowan) And because these cells are genetic copies there is virtually no risk of “immune system rejection.”(McGowan) This accomplishment was a big leap forward for stem cell research but “making purpose-built tissues may be far in the future.”(McGowan) Larry Goldstein who is the director of the University of California San Diego Stem Cell Program stated that “Mitalipov’s triumph has big near-term benefits in giving researchers a new tool to understand all the details of how stem cells grow, divide and differentiate.” (McGowan) In terms of the moral and ethical argument against stem cells, this accomplishment also makes it harder for the opposition to argue the stance that using human embryos that could eventually turn into fetuses is wrong because the SCNT cells do not develop into fetuses. The future of stem cell research definitely has a lot in store for the medical and scientific communities. 

Stem cells are an integral part of the future of modern medicine, they will be the cornerstone that cures for diseases, like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia, will be made on. Synthetic stem cells will be used to regrow muscle tissue and repair damage from spinal cord injuries, allowing people to walk and use their arms for the first time in years. A paraplegic has already been given back his arms through stem cell treatments and maybe one day he will even be able to walk again. Through stem cell research we will be able to finally give organ transplants to all those who need them and help people live longer, not being separated from their families. People will not have to worry about the use of human embryos in this research because of synthetic stem cells and scientists having the ability to only take a few cells from the embryo with it still being able to form into a fetus. Diseases, like leukemia and sickle cell anemia for example, will no longer plague human kind, instead people will be able to live long healthy lives all thanks to stem cells. If people around the world will realize that stem cells can only help people and that scientists have found ways to avoid the problems of early stem cell research then the world would be on a better path to healing people’s lives. With new innovations in stem cell technology being made all the time life will soon be a lot easier to live and it will also be a lot longer thanks to those innovations. These cells have so much amazing potential to save lives and ease our suffering, hopefully with every new advance in this field people will start to support the much needed research into stem cells so that our future will be a better one.
