Stem Cells
The New York Times is running an article entitled, "New Stem Cell Method Could Ease Ethical Concerns." The article begins, " Two teams of scientists are reporting today that they turned human skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells without having to make or destroy an embryo — a feat that could quell the ethical debate troubling the field." "The two independent teams, from Japan and Wisconsin, note that their method also creates stem cells that genetically match the donor without having to resort to the controversial step of cloning. If stem cells are used to make replacement cells and tissues for patients, it would be invaluable to have genetically matched cells because they would not be rejected by the immune system. Even more important, scientists say, is that genetically matched cells from patients will enable them to study complex diseases, like Alzheimer's, in the lab," according to the article.
Read the Article!!
Discussion Starters for Younger Children
- Ask your students to describe a time when they learned something new. What did they learn? How did it feel to learn something new? Why did it feel this way? Ask students to select one thing that they would like to learn.
- Do your students think that adults continue to learn new things? Why/why not? Do your students think it is easier for children to learn or adults to learn? Encourage them to explain their thoughts.
- Ask students what it means to be healthy. What kinds of things should a person do to keep him/herself healthy? Ask students what it means to be sick. What kinds of things should somebody do when he/she is sick to get better?
- Have your students ever worked really hard at something so that they could be the best at it? What did they work really hard at? Why did students want to be the best at this thing? Do students think it's OK to come in second or third place sometimes instead of first place? Why/why not?
- Vocabulary terms to discuss: Embryonic; Subtle; Cloning; and, Extract.
- Do students think it would be OK to take stem cells from an embryo, thereby preventing the embryo from growing, if the stem cell could enable somebody to recover from a serious illness? Why/why not?
- Ask students what can be learned about scientists from this article. Do students think that certain parts of a scientists job could be invigorating? Why/why not? If so, what parts of the job could be invigorating?
- Ask students to imagine that they are stem cell researchers. Now that colleagues have discovered how to create embryonic cells without using human embryos what questions do the "researchers" think they should attempt to answer. Why these questions?
posted by Andrew Pass @ 7:07 PM
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2 Comments:
My reaction to "Stem Cells" is one of amazement and concern. First, amazement. If scientists and medical professionals have found a away to develop cells and tissues to aid humans in the fight against illness, disease, and organismic dysfunction, more power to them-we should all be so lucky to be equipped with the healthiest and strongest cells.
Now, my concern. The prospect of eliminating dysfunction at the cellular level raises some serious moral issues. While someone may take the opportunity to identify the cells that could lead to cerebral palsy or cystic fibrosis as a benefit, what sort of message does this give to children and adults living and struggling with such developmental disorders? That they do not belong, they are dysfunctions of nature, they are a sad reminder of the past? The same goes for extracting cells t hat could lead to deficiencies in cognitive development.
Having the ability to choose healthy cells is one thing, but tampering with cellular makeup to cater to certain outcomes is another. Who is to stop scientists/medical professionals from following the wishes of parents who want children only with blonde hair, tall, and the genetic propensity to choose one religion over another? Or maybe someone is fervent about having all male children, maybe because a culture is adamant about keeping the family name or maybe because in a culture females are not valued members of society. No one has the right to play creator, and those who feel they do are destine to repeat humankinds worst moments (harsh racism, sexism, genocide).
Paul,
You have a couple of really good points. The best response to you is that we have to figure out a way to enable scientists to prevent illnesses while preventing them from creating a select population. But then again, what does the word "illness" even mean. Years ago homosexuality was an illness.
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