Advantages Over Embryonic Stem Cells
In harvesting embryonic stem cells, a human embryo is destroyed. Many pro-life individuals associate this act with abortion and consider it immoral. Amniotic epithelial cells are harvested from the placenta, which is commonly discarded after birth. The cells are very easily obtainable without the use of intrusive procedures. Thus their use averts the controversy about embryonic stem cells. There are also large amounts of amniotic epithelial cells found in the placenta and can be found in upwards of 50-100 million cells from one extraction. However, several billion cells are required to use for transplantation in order to treat and fight diseases. Therefore, the cells must be expanded in a lab to have enough cells for transplantation.
Unlike embryonic stem cells, amniotic stem cells have not shown a propensity for developing into teratomas and other cancer-like tumors upon injection into living tissue. Amniotic epithelial cells have not been known to produce cancerous tumors in the host despite the fact that these cells do express genes found in embryonic stem cells that are known to promote tumor formation.
Organs engineered from amniotic epithelial cells obtained from the placenta associated with a particular person's birth would not be rejected by that person; such organs would have the same genotype as that person and thus be fully compatible with that person's immune system.
Read more about this topic: Amniotic Epithelial Cells
Famous quotes containing the words advantages over, advantages, embryonic, stem and/or cells:
“There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“When the manipulations of childhood are a little larceny, they may grow and change with the child into qualities useful and admire in the grown-up world. When they are the futile struggle for love and concern and protection, they may become the warped and ruthless machinations of adults who seek in the advantages of power what they could never win as children.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“All things seem mention of themselves
And the names which stem from them branch out to other referents.
Hugely, spring exists again.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Madness is locked beneath. It goes into tissues, is swallowed by the cells. The cells go mad. Cancer is their flag. Cancer is the growth of madness denied.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)