Persuasive Speech: Stem Cells

Before I was even born, my mother had a best friend named Bob. He was a pretty well known lawyer at the time, and a very successful man. He had two children, a wife, and many friends who knew and loved him. My mom and Bob had been the closest friends for around five years, up until the point where he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the age of fifty. He left all of that behind when he passed away from the painful cancer that had consumed his body. For the first time in her life, my mother knew what it was like to lose a best friend, and she lost him in the worst way possible. Just like Bob, many other adults, children, and elderly people have suffered through so many diseases, without knowing a cure, until now. Today, I hope to persuade

According to Mayoclinic.org, stem cells are the body’s original cells, from which every other cell with a specialized function derives from. Under the right conditions within your body or inside of a lab, these unique cells divide themselves to generate a larger amount of cells, eventually constructing a new body part or internal organ of your choosing. With this, we are able to create new hearts, limbs, and bones. This allows army veterans with lost limbs and children in need of a heart transplant to have new opportunities and live a normal life with their new body

Currently they are doing more research on different ways to obtain stem cells, without harvesting an embryo. According to the National Institutes of Health, the first way to obtain different stem cells is through an adult’s surrounding organ tissues. Adult stem cells are found within a body’s organ tissues. Their main purpose is to repair and maintain those tissues, using cells to multiply in order to replace old tissue. Scientists have found that since these reparative cells have the ability to create new tissues, they could very well create the organs where they are located through the right conditions. This way of obtaining stem cells has been much less controversial than the original way of obtaining them, but at the same time, is a lot less efficient. Generating a new organ or body part is time consuming through this method, but we have to keep in mind that scientists are still finding other ways on how to obtain stem cells.
Mentioned by Mayoclinic.org, adult stem cells found in a human’s tissues can be genetically altered and given properties of embryonic stem cells. This expedites the process of generating new replacement organs, and also prevents immune system rejection of the new organs. The only fault in this process is the fact that scientists aren’t certain whether genetically modifying these adult stem cells and placing them back in the body will cause adverse