How to Cure Diseases With Human & Animal Embryos

The use of human or animal embryos to cure disease is a field full of promise for medical research. However, using human embryos brings up questions of when life begins and whether is it moral and ethical to use embryos for parts to assist in saving lives of those suffering from serious diseases. There is some speculation that stem cells could be extracted from more mature embryos without damaging the life within. Animal embryo use is much less controversial, and some experiments using these embryos to cure human disease have been successful.

Things You'll Need

• Sophisticated research laboratories
• Human embryonic stem cells
• Animal embryonic stem cells

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Instructions

Using Human & Animal Embryos To Cure Human Diseases

• 1

  Two Kinds of Human Stem Cells
  There are two kinds of stem cells used in medical research. Adult stem cells can be collected from the heart, liver or brain. These offer the advantage of being already from the body of person who needs them, and eliminate the problems of rejection. Embryonic stem cells are collected from fertility clinics when embryos are no longer needed for implantation into women trying to become pregnant. These excess embryos would be discarded had they not been used to try to help cure disease.

• 2

  Animal Embryonic Stem Cells
  The use of animal embryos is much less controversial, and some experiments using these embryos to cure human disease have already shown signs of success, such as a recent Israeli project using fetal pig cells to treat Type 1 diabetes in monkeys. Animal embryos are more easily acquired and do not cause the ethical controversy that using human embryos entails. It has been shown that the cells of some species of animal show remarkable similarities in process and structure to human cells, and this similarity has caused a number of researchers to explore the feasibility of using animal stem cells for transplant into humans. Surprisingly, pigs have been used in many of these studies because of the similarity to humans.

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  Research Using Human Stem Cells
  Because of the limitation put on human embryonic stem cell research in recent years, there have been no real evidence of cures due to their use. With more open policies on human embryonic stem cell research, cures for such diseases as Parkinson's, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries will be discovered and implemented on a wide-spread basis in the health care field. Currently, biologist Thomas Reh of the University of Washington is working on production of large amounts of retinal photoreceptor cells from embryonic stem cells to cure blindness.

• 4

  Research Using Animal Stem Cells
  Use of animal embryonic stem cells have shown some success in treating Type 1 diabetes. An Israeli study at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot was successful in treating Type 1 diabetes in monkeys that were injected with embryonic cells from fetal pigs. Five months later, these monkeys were producing their own insulin. The insulin was porcine, while the vessels making the insulin were entirely the hosts'. If human trials are able to eventually reproduce these results, the technique will be used to cure diabetes in the human population routinely.