The Future of Medicine: Stem Cell Therapy
Introduction Medicine has always been a forward-thinking profession. Always looking for ways to create effective treatments that make minimal compromise (health or finance-wise) on their patients. Thanks to this philosophy, new innovations and updates are seeing the light of day on a yearly basis. Among the latest findings that offer great hopes is the field of stem cell therapy. In fact, it has been dubbed the future of medicine. Follow this presentation if you want to learn what it’s all about.
What Is It? In a nutshell, stem cell therapy is a new treatment method aiming to use stem cells to repair damaged tissues all over the body. For those still unaware of the phenomenon, stem cells are defined as undifferentiated cells that can change into different/any kinds of tissues and then multiply. This unique ability puts them in a very unique situation in that they can – in theory – be used for virtually any form of medical condition. Even though stem cell therapy is still in its formative stages, its potential to become the next great medical breakthrough is simply too big to ignore.
Current and Potential Uses In this day and age, some organ tissues are so fragile that, should they suffer any type of damage, they would find themselves unable to heal. Notable organs include the heart, the kidneys, and parts of the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord.) With this technology, we could deploy stem cells right into these damaged areas, fix the issue by replacing dead cells, and potentially return organ function to pre-injury levels. Stem cell therapy is now also being developed to be used to treat debilitating and life-threatening diseases such as cancers, degenerative disorders, and loss of sensory functions.
Advantages
The advantages of stem cell therapy are numerous. The biggest has to be its potential to heal just about any kind of health problem. If development should proceed as planned, it could someday represent the answer to diseases and injuries that would otherwise be terminal in effect.
Advantages Also, compared to most treatments available today, the use of stem cells is much less invasive, and it poses fewer short and long term side effects. Last but not least, it knows no restrictions in that it could be used on anyone, from babies to the elderly. But also patients with weakened immune systems and so on.
Disadvantages As much as advantages abound, there are also downsides regarding stem cell use that could raise concerns at some point. There is always a risk, concerning side effects which could surface during and/or after treatment. Also, the use of these methods could potentially contaminate the human gene pool in the end. Beyond the medical problems, the ethics side of it has to be taken into account. Indeed, there are ethical issues involved in testing this sort of treatment on both humans and animals, as there are in its improper use for purposes such as artificial enhancement.
Conclusion The debate is very intense with regards to the use of stem cell therapy. Even though still in its formative stages, there are so many points and counterpoints going on both for and against this treatment that no consensus could possibly be reached. However, if one thing is clear, it’s that its potential for good looms very large.
For more information about stem cells and how they could possibly help you, visit: http://www.cellsforlife.com