A New Era of Medicine

Stem cell research has long been held captive by the Bush administration’s overly simplistic and religious points of view, which they signed into law effectively banning stem cell research of any new stem cells.  Thankfully, President Obama, not being guided by the voices in his head, or what George W. Bush called God, he’s now lifted that ban and allowed for further stem cell scientific research to continue to shock and amaze us all at how unbelievably helpful these little things are.

The ban was specific to embryonic stem cells and not to the adult stem cells.  It’s true that many condition will be treatable through the use of adult stem cells, but with the ban in place researchers had more difficulty in obtaining stem cells for research.  Though many top medical facilities in other countries were already on the way to research and implication of stem cells, American medical research facilities had their hands tied and thus have been falling behind the rest of the world.  If we want America to be on top in medicine and science, we need to be conducting research. Secondly, the ability of embryonic stem cells to grow completely new tissue, of a varied sort, is unprecedented compared to adult stem cells.

There are so many ailments that for generations had no effective treatment, or no treatment whatsoever.  As was posted earlier, “Science Back on top in White House,” the science community has long been at siege over the dissemination of information coming out of the Bush White House which didn’t match up to the reports being given to the White House, i.e. the White House was changing scientific reports to match their own agenda.  The news coming from the science community, world wide, is staggering in its all-encompassing beneficial findings to support massive changes within the medical community.  

What may seem like a magical potion, stem cells effectively identify cells they are put in contact with and then replicate those cells.  They seem to have the blue-prints ready for whatever biological cell they come into contact with.  It doesn’t take a genius to think for a moment about the limitless possibilities stem cell research opens for health care recipients.  Here’s a few examples:

1) Wearing a cast to heal a broken bone takes weeks, and then plenty of physical therapy in many cases.  That could be a thing of the past. 

2) Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) could become an easily cured condition.

3) Functional oral tissue could be created with embryonic stem cells.

4) Wouldn’t it be great if no one ever had to spend their life in a wheel chair?  Spinal cord injuries have long been in the ‘impossible’ forum, but that could be over sooner then we thought.

5) Sign Language could become a dead language.  Why?  Stem cells could cure deafness.

6) And for all those seeking, ‘just a lift,’ or wanting them to be, ‘just a little bigger,’ will be delighted to hear that women in the UK may receive stem cells for breast augmentation.  Healthy real tissue breasts instead of hard-as-rock, even-though-they-look-great breasts.  I think this might be the most important break through.

This is only a sampling and stem cell research has only just begun.  Now that the doors are wide open in America for

"Wait, that's a human being," joked the rational atheist.

 embryonic stem cell research, we could see a boom in the use of stem cells easily within our life times.  Technology is only coming faster, information is dessiminated more quickly, and developments in every field are arriving daily.  I’m looking forward to being able to have a new liver harvested from stem cells to replace the one I’ve destroyed during the Bush years.  Or maybe a new lung to replace the one effected by smoking cigarettes since high school.  And maybe we could get a new brain for all the fantasy laden people waiting for Armageddon.