Stem cells from menstrual blood

[plekhanov]

An interesting article...!!

 

http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/09/stem-cells-from-menstrual-blood-strange-but-true/

 

As the article says at the end -

 

"Would you really want to be the recipient of stem cells plucked from the contents of a woman's monthly cycle?"

 

:)

What a bizarre question. If I needed it I'd be overjoyed to get a kidney from a dead person as I suspect would most people. You'd have to be a colossally sexually repressed person to be fine with organ transplants from cadavers but not donated menstrual blood.

[plekhanov]

People kick up a stink, as you put it, because either the embyo's are from aborted pregancy - the use of which some(pro life) groups see as supporting abortion. Others are created just to be used for stem cell research and groups feel that this is also killing unborn children, as an abortion would be.

Your sure about this? Everything I've read suggested that stem cell research is carried out on embryos which were fertilised in-vitro, predominantly from foetuses left over from fertility treatment. From my (very basic) understanding harvesting them from aborted foetuses seems an needlessly difficult and controversial method of securing a supply of stem cells.

 

Alot of the argument comes down to personal belief about when life can be considered to have started, fertilisation, conception, when a feotus is viable... etc etc. A very contentious area.

Life began several billion years ago and has been an ongoing process ever since.

 

As for "viability", embryonic stem cells used in research come from eggs fertilised in petri dishes, such embryos would have to successfully implant in a womb and survive for twenty something weeks there to be subject to the usual arguments about viability which surround abortion.

 

I think that any advances that can be made in how stem cells can be harvested in less contentious ways would greatly aid the research into their medical uses.

Well obviously but this in no way means that other forms of stem cell research, including embryonic stem cell research should be prohibited.