Stem Cells

The book I read to research this post was Stem Cells A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Slack which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. I think this book isn’t quite as good as Stem Cells For Dummies which I reviewed a while back but it is a good introduction to this subject. The reason Stem Cell research is so controversial is that they tend to use embryoes for the  various procedures although many of these are aborted fetuses. Immuno suppressant drugs have to be used to the implantation of the material. Embryonic material is best because it has the ability to reproduce. One problem with introducing stem cells is if they are introduced particularly into a solid organ they have to be in a solution and many of the cells die. Bone Marrow transplants can be introduced into the blood so have a good survival rate. The spine and injections injected in to it on the other hand sees many cells die. Sometimes a host is used to breed or multiply the cells and other times the cells are just grown and transplanted. Much stem cell research is done on animals like mice or similiar animals to minimize controversy. When Dolly the sheep was cloned it was very controversial due to it being a high level animal with much in common with humans. Many people thought the next step was to clone people. This book is a little short at around 150 pages but is an enjoyable read and is interesting.