What’s a Stem Cell and Why Does It Matter?

The Stem Cell Debate

By Spencer Dunlap, BS Biology, MS Ministry

What’s A Stem Cell?
As you no doubt know, our bodies are made up of cells. These are little machines that carry out complex activities throughout our lives. Each of these cells, all one hundred trillion of them in your body, have the exact same genetic makeup or thumbprint (technically known as DNA). And just like your thumbprint, your genetic makeup is unique only to you. Whether it is a cell in your ear, your liver, or your big toe, it has the exact same genetic makeup. But how does that cell become an ear cell, liver cell, or big toe cell? When you were just a few cells big inside of mom, your cells began to specialize. The genetics didn’t change, but parts of the genes were “turned on”. Depending on what part was “turned on” determined what part of the body that cell became. Even if a cell became a liver cell, it still had the whole genetic package that could have turned that cell into any other part of your body…but those other parts were just “turned off”. A stem cell is a cell that never specialized. Stem cells have the whole genetic package just like every other cell, only when it came time to specialize, it didn’t.
You can find stem cells in many different places in your body including, but not limited to your nasal passages, your bone marrow, and even your fat. What is amazing about these stem cells is that they are very flexible and can take on the attributes of other tissues when placed around other tissues. For example, a nasal stem cell can actually become new liver cells when placed in a damaged liver! Bone marrow stem cells can turn into nerve cells! And virtually ever other tissue can be regenerated through stem cells. BUT, we must be careful here. There are two types of Stem Cells: Embryonic and Adult.
Adult Stem Cells are the non-specialized cells found throughout the body (and even in the umbilical cord blood of babies) of animals after birth. There are NO bioethical issues regarding research on Adult Stem Cells since you don’t harm the person you are taking them from. These Adult Stem Cells can be taken out, helped to grow, and put back in a person with an injury or disease or even placed in someone else. We have had GREAT success with this technique, and although the statistics are different from one place to another we have seen cures and treatments for over seventy different disorders or diseases from this technique…and again, no bioethics dilemmas. We’re not talking little things here, but major advances for Cerebral Palsy, Heart Damage, Parkinson’s, Epilepsy, Blindness, and many many more. Adult stem cells have been used for cures for decades; however, it has only been in the last few years that we realized it was adult stem cells that were giving us the cures. As an example, what we all used to know as bone marrow transplants for various diseases and disorders were in fact Adult Stem Cell transplants.
Embryonic Stem Cells are cells found in embryos shortly after the embryo begins to develop. The embryo is “dissected” and the stem cells are removed thus destroying the embryo. These Embryonic Stem Cells have been used in research as well to try and cure disease. Only a few major problems exist. First and foremost, Embryonic Stem Cell research is a bioethics nightmare. It is the destruction of life in order to harvest stem cells. This is not just my opinion. No scientist would disagree with me that an embryo is biologically alive. Pick up any biology or life sciences text book and flip to the chapter on “Life”. You will find that an embryo most certainly fits the definition of being alive. Many in favor of research with Embryonic Stem Cells like to bring up the idea that we have 400,000 “left over” embryos in fertilization clinics that will get thrown away anyway. Please know that nearly 90% of these are spoken for and the parents of these embryos intend to “use” them. Even if these weren’t spoken for, the number is not nearly large enough to actually use in clinical tests and cures. This is why you see commercials about the damage done to women during stem cell ballot initiatives. They will have to get the cells from somewhere and that somewhere is women. The process is very dangerous and has great potential for exploitation (especially for poor women who are willing to subject their bodies to high dose hormone injections to produce more eggs for research). Beyond that, Embryonic Stem Cells have caused tumors to grow over and over again in clinical trials. This is a great dilemma to scientists. Lastly, there have been NO CURES from Embryonic Stem Cell research. In the few cases that report positive results, it was in cases where both Embryonic and Adult Stem Cells were being used. Embryonic Stem Cells DO NOT and WILL NOT be the answer to disease in our life time. They have been doing embryonic stem cell research for around 25 years…that’s plenty of time to find positive results if there were any to be found. And let’s not forget that this research destroys life in an effort to help another life.
The other very real dilemma that comes up when we discuss Embryonic Stem Cells is the topic of cloning. One way that scientists may be able to get their hands on Embryonic Stem Cells is by cloning cells and then extracting the stem cells from these. We could certainly take many pages to describe this process, but I will as gently as possible explain this process and then help you understand why this is so dangerous.
Cloning is most often done through a process called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (or SCNT for short). Cloning is not something that happens in a Star Trek movie where an adult walks into a chamber, and a minute later a fully developed adult “clone” walks out behind them. Cloning is simply creating what I refer to as a “time-delayed identical twin”.
Another quick biology lesson:
All of the cells in our body have the same genetic makeup as we discussed in the beginning of this document; however, all of your body cells (called somatic cells) have two identical copies of it. This is where you get your 46 chromosomes from (two sets of 23) if you remember high school biology class. All of your sex cells (eggs and sperm) have only one copy of this genetic makeup. These cells therefore have only 23 chromosomes. This is important because in sexual reproduction, a sperm with 23 chromosomes joins with an egg with 23 chromosomes, and we get one fertilized egg, or zygote with 46 chromosomes. This fertilized egg begins to divide which become two cells; the two cells become four, four becomes eight and so on. Shortly thereafter, this group of living cells begins to specialize and form tissues. This is basically how all organisms grow (a process called Mitosis). In Embryonic Stem Cell research, after the cells divide for a few days, the cell is dissected if you’ll remember, and the dividing embryo is destroyed to obtain its stem cells.
In Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (cloning), an egg from a female “donor” is removed from the ovary. This egg has its nucleus removed and discarded, because remember, it only has 23 chromosomes…not very useful to create a dividing human cell by itself. Then the nucleus of a somatic cell, or body cell from a human is “harvested” from a donor, and the nucleus (with 46 chromosomes) is removed and placed inside the egg cell where its nucleus had been. This egg cell with its new 46 chromosomes is basically jump started and it begins to divide just like a cell would divide had it been created through sexual reproduction. At this point you have created a living clone…a time delayed identical twin.
All kinds of bioethics issues surround this process. One issue is that you have created life (look at the text books). Who then has control over that life? If it is my clone, can I destroy it? Can I grow it to harvest a new liver for myself? Do I have that control over a naturally occurring twin? Many scientists like to water down the topic by saying that Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer is only going to be used for “Therapeutic Cloning” which means it won’t be implanted into a uterus and allowed to grow…this would be “Reproductive Cloning”. Therapeutic Cloning would be only for research…like Embryonic Stem Cell research. What you need to know is that the process for creating a clone is the same whether you intend to destroy it for research or implant it to grow. The difference is really just a semantics issue. It is also a huge ethics question as we have already discussed.
Here’s the bottom line, Cloning and Embryonic Stem Cell Research destroys life. We do not have that right. If we open that door, how can we shut it? By creating life knowing that we will destroy it puts that life in a separate category of less worth. When we begin to look at life in terms of worth, it isn’t long before we transfer the concept of worth on others lives. Are the elderly, or sick, or mentally disabled worth the same as each of us? The answer is yes. We don’t have the right to make those distinctions. And for those that believe in “doing what is necessary to cure disease”, please ask yourself if it is right to destroy one life to save another. Embryonic Stem Cell research gives only false hopes, ethical dilemmas, and detracts attention, research, and money from the research that has had proven effects…that of Adult Stem Cell Research.

For other resources, please visit:
www.nocloning.org