Editorial (350+)

How much of something can really effect your life? Something the size of a mustard seed? -smaller. The size of …. punctuation? -smaller! How can smaller that’s so small have such a huge effect on everyone? Yes, everyone!

If someone knew the cure for cancer, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, or diabetes, you would want them to share their antidote, right?

Well it’s possible! Something that’s so small, approximately 30 cells, has a chance of getting us one step closer to curing incurable diseases.

By researching stem cells, specifically embryonic stem cells, we have the capability to derive and regenerate any type of cell and it’s function within the body. Although, we have to be careful and keep in mind the concerns of ethics, because of the use of human embryos.

Just recently, President Barack Obama approved a senate bill removing restrictions that were placed on federal funding for stem cell lines. These restrictions were enforced my former President George W. Bush. These restrictions included prohibiting federal funds for research in which human embryos were created, destroyed, or discarded. -Former President George W. Bush did allow federal funding of embryonic stem cells for research up until the very day the restrictions were imposed , but still limiting researchers to only 21 lines.

Even though researchers have been limited to the 21 lines, Bush never imposed segregating the federally funded and the private funded labs; if he would have the cost would have sky rocketed and slowed down productiveness, but made government laws easier to follow.

With the amount of research that our country has compared to others, we are behind significantly. We must learn from other faster progressing countries and try to catch up with the rest of the world.

There are so many potential embryos that are either being unused, thrown-away, or frozen to help research. Instead of wasting these precious resources, we can take these excess cells and use them as research.

The research we do is the math and formulas that we create for the future. The research that we on embryonic stem cells now, is the ‘future medicine.’