Personal First Aid Kit

Imagine one day you walk into the doctor and you find out you have some sort of terrible disease. Let's hope this never happens. But, you never know right. So the doc says, I'm sorry but you have severe heart disease and your heart will fail in about a year. You go into a panic, and then start to freak out. But then, the doctor tells you that he could take a skin cell from your arm, and turn into millions of heart muscle and replace the damaged muscles in your failing heart, thus restoring your heart's normal function. No way. Can that happen?? As of now, no, but the technology does exist...and it is all thanks to Stem Cells.

Embryonic Stem Cells are cells that can turn into any cell in our body...brain, heart, liver, pancreas, etc. Because of this remarkable property, embryonic stem cells offer promise for replacing damage cells or tissues in disease. However, a major problem lies in the source of these cells. As indicated by the name, these cells come from embryos, and as you can imagine, that could be a problem. Until now. One bad ass scientist showed that you can turn skin cells, into embryonic stem cells. These new cells are called IPS cells. Check it out...

And so now, in theory, if you have a bad heart, we can take your skin, make these IPS cells, and generate a new heart.

Additionally, we can use these IPS cells to study disease. For example, we can take skin from ALS patients, turn them into IPS cells, then go ahead and make the cells that normally die in ALS. We can then watch these cells die in the culture dish, and study how, and even better, screen drugs against them to see if we can keep them alive. There have already been major breakthroughs with blood disorders such as sickle cell anemia using IPS cell technology. Check it out.

In no way am I suggesting that we can cure all disease, but I am suggesting we now, for the first time, have the tools necessary to really try to cure disease. And those tools are stem cells. So, read up, and do your homework and please support this essential branch of biomedical research.

Stem Cells, It's Kinda Like...-C-