cell division 0.3

Question 1

who can stem cells help

Answer 1

patients to treat medical conditions and disease

Question 2

do adult stem cells have a wide variety of use or narrow

Answer 2

narrow

Question 3

do embryonic have a wide variety of use or narrow

Answer 3

wide

Question 4

why are stem cells used to e.g. make an organ for someone with a faulty organ

Answer 4

as using your own stem cells will make sure one hundred percent that they will not reject the organ as they are genetically identical

Question 5

what is an alternative to produce stem cells with the same genetic makeup as the patient

Answer 5

therapeutic cloning

Question 6

what does the technique of therapeutic cloning involve

Answer 6

it involves the transfer of the nucleus from a cell of the patient, to an egg cell whose nucleus has been removed.

Question 7

what are the benefits of stem cells

Answer 7

Stem cells have great potential, in treating patients with currently untreatable conditions, growing organs for transplants, and research

Question 8

what are the clinical issues with stem cells

name 2

Answer 8

There is no guarantee how successful these therapies will be, for example the use of stem cells in replacing nerve cells lost in Parkinson’s disease patients.

The current difficulty in finding suitable stem cell donors.

The difficulty in obtaining and storing a patient’s embryonic stem cells. These would have to be collected before birth - some clinics offer to store blood from the umbilical cord when a person is born.

Mutations have been observed in stem cells cultured for a number of generations, and some mutated stem cells have been observed to behave like cancer cells.

Cultured stem cells could be contaminated with viruses which would be transferred to a patient.

Question 9

what are the ethical issues of stem cells name 2

Answer 9

A source of embryonic stem cells is unused embryos produced by in vitro fertilisation (IVF)

For therapeutic cloning is it right to create embryos for therapy, and destroy them in the process?

Embryos could come to be viewed as a commodity, and not as an embryo that could develop into a person.

At what stage of its development should an embryo be regarded as, and treated as a person?

Question 10

what are the social issues of stem cells,name 2

Answer 10

1) people feel that human embryos shouldn’t be used for experiments since each one is a potential human life

2) they could be used to produce clones, which are illegal