Embryonic Stem Cell Research Essay

Morally ambiguous to much of todays society, stem cell research has become a booming method of research. The most promising version of this to researchers is embryonic stem cell (ESC) research. When conducting research on ESCs, one must fertilize an egg and then destroy it by extracting the cells growing within the blastocyst (a primal version of the zygote formed after the joining of an egg and sperm). Extracting embryonic stem cells involves the ending of potential life, without any currently viable results, thus creating an immoral method of research.

Stem cell research is most commonly associated with ESCs, which are extracted from fertilized human embryos. Although common, other methods show less promise in the eyes of researchers in the biomedical realm. This is related to the fact that ESCs are pluripotent, meaning that they are unspecialized, with the potential to become any cell of the human body (Manzar, 2). As stated by researcher John A. Robertson, “There is a fervent battle over the ethical acceptability of

“ESC research relies on the destruction of an embryo, a potential form of human life so that the pluripotent stem cells can be harnessed for conducting research and experiments.”(Manzar, 2) Despite biomedical researchers claims that ESC research will eventually benefit society, the idea that it has not achieved that yet, while embryos have been destroyed in numerous amounts, leads to a conclusion which opposes their initial ideology. The fact that the embryos could have become humans, who may have one day won a novel peace prize, or invented the most innovative machine of their era, or if not that, they could have just been happy people with families and love, shows that ESC research is immoral and contradictory to its task. Nevertheless, ESC research carries forward, interestingly enough, without any true benefit to speak