Morton Kondracke - July 10, 2002
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Q: Are there not stem cells in every adult, rather than just embryonic stem cells?
A: There are two kinds of stem cells. One is adult - which means that the tissue is already differentiated, but by some process which I cannot explain, blood cells, marrow cells, maybe even fat cells, can be tweaked to become other kinds of cells. This offers great hope. I am not in favor of destroying embryos for the sake of destroying embryos. If it develops that fat cells, cellulite, turns out to be as good as or better than embryos, fine. Let's use cellulite, and cure all the diseases with fat. But I think it would be a mistake to close down this one promising avenue of research while we pursue the other. Most of the scientific community thinks that embryonic stem cells offer greater potential than adult stem cells do, so it seems to me that the wise thing to do is follow both tracks of research. These embryos are going to be destroyed anyway, they're going to be thrown away. Why not use them to find out what actually can be done?
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