• Question: in our lesson we had a debate about wether people should use stem cells from embryo's or adults, what do you think?!

    Asked by cheekymonkey1 to Emma, James, Jayne, Kara, Sharon on 25 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sharon Sneddon

      Sharon Sneddon answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      Hi Cheekymonkey,
      It’s great you are having debates like this in class!
      I think that both should be used. Adult stem cells are really useful in treating diseases and they are a lot easier to isolate and grow in the lab, however, they are not able to cure all diseases and there are some organs that we can’t get adult stem cells from, so in those cases, embryonic stem cells would be a good option.

      A few people are unhappy with the use of embryonic stem cells because of the fact they come from embryo’s but, as there are other ways to make them, without destroying an embryo and lots of researchers (including me) are working on this.

      I think both are really good scientific tools which hold great hope for the future.

    • Photo: James Chan

      James Chan answered on 25 Mar 2011:

      Hi cheekymonkey,
      The different stem cells should be used for different purposes. Embryonic stem cells are more versatile so they can differentiate into more different types of specialised cells, but the problems are that they might, as a result, be more prone to turning into cancer cells, and also there are the ethical issues about killing embryos. Adult stem cells can very well be used in certain conditions without any of the ethical issues because no embryos are killed. For example, in my research, we are looking at how to make broken bones heal quicker. I use adult stem cells and they are really good at turning into bone, so there’s no need to go extracting embryonic stem cells from embryos. However, if you are trying to regenerate other types of cells that the adult stem cells cannot turn into, you’d have to use embryonic stem cells. so I think the answer to your question is, it depends on the context and there’s a place for both adult and embryonic stem cells.

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