Stem Cells and Chemicals

I haven't been blogging because I've been at the American Chemical Society Meeting in San Diego.

During the meeting I attended a keynote talk on stem cells, although it is a bit out of my field, I couldn't resist the curiousity factor.

The talk was fascinating and the field is stunning. Currently, they are taking adult stem cells and inserting them into the Hippocampus of the brain to regrow areas damaged by ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). There is also work being done where they are repairing cardiac tissue with adult stem cells.

There are problems with teaching the cells how to differentiate and preventing them from multiplying out of control. These difficulties are especially prominent with embryonic stem cells.

However, I don't think research with embryonic stem cells should be banned, but I do think it should be restricted.

The restriction which I think everyone could live with is to ask people who are going to have embryos created for artificial insemination what they want to do with the extra embryos. There could simply be a form which would be an "Embryo" donors form. Perhaps the form has the options of donating the embryos to research, or donating them to single women or sterile couples for surrogate mothers, or simply destroying them.

Give the people whose sperm and egg created the embryo the option of what should be done with it.

I believe this would allow plenty of stem cell lines to be created for research without resortin to making embryos solely for research.

The solution is simple, Congress and the Press. You make it complicated.