Inquiry Contract Progress

While I researched Stem Cells today in study hall, I started to learn more about the different levels of potency stem cells can have and what actually defines a stem cell. The two properties, which help to define a stem cell, are the abilities to differentiate into more specialized cells and the ability to go through many cell divisions without becoming differentiated. The potency of stem cells is also categorized into five different levels. The top most is a stem cell which is “totipotent,” meaning the cell can produce most any cell, including becoming an organ. The next level is “pluripotent” which is generally descended from the totipotent cells and can still differentiate into nearly any cell. After pluripotent comes “multipotent,” and this refers to the ability of the cell to divide into several different types of cells, but only those, which are closely related. Next are the “Oligopotent” cells, which are only able to transform into a few new cells, but are still not specialized. Finally are the “unipotent” cells, which can only produce cells of their own type but can actively renew themselves.

Inquiry Contract Progress

Yesterday when I researched about the stem cells i learned more about the differences between the adult stem cell and the embryonic stem cell. The embryonic stem cell is taken from an "inner cell mass" of the blastocytes (thus destroying them) and they can then be used to create any other type of cell. With adults stem cells, however, the stem cells are extracted from adult tissue and, together with a different type of cell which can differentiate (become different types of cells) can be used mainly for repair by replenishing specialized cells. This helps to throw the Stem Cell debate in a new light because, while the adult stem cells may not kill the person it came from, they are not as seemingly useful as the embryonic stem cells. This seems to give more credit to those who are proponents of the embryonic stem cell research but at the same time, the life of the embryo needs to be considered.

IC Progress

Over this weekend, I did not do much in regards to my Inquiry Contract because a distant uncle came and I spent much of my time with him. However, I did ask my uncle, my dad and my mom what their views were on Stem Cell Research. None of them knew an extreme amount about it, but from what they knew they had differing views. My dad believed that, while the end results were good, any other possibility for stem cell harvesting should be taken so that the lives of those embryos were not lost. My mom and uncle, however, believed that Stem Cell research was a good thing, even though it resulted in the death of the embryos. So while I did not do much research, I was able to look into different people’s perspectives on the subject, which was fairly interesting.

Inquiry Contract Progress

Today for work on my inquiry contract, I read a few articles about stem cell research (both embryonic and not) to start to educate myself about it. One of the interesting things I found out was the fact that there is actually research going into adult stem cell extraction, cells of which can be extracted and then used to treat things such as leukemia. Not only have these treatments been successful, but the usage of the stem cells was much less controversial because it came from adults and as such did not destroy a fetus and future life when harvested. I have also seen a relatively interesting argument in which people argued against stem cell research because they pointed out that such advanced scientific research often leads to terrible discoveries, such as the nuclear bomb. Though I did not find a large amount of information tonight, what I did find was interesting and helped shed a little bit of light on the stem cell research debate.

Inquiry Contract Progress

I heavily considered switching my topic to examining the idea that gun control (or rather more specifically taking guns away from a population) would decrease the amount of violent acts that occurred, but I decided that I would not be able to truly do that topic without ranting, for I already know my rather strong position on that argument. Because of this I am sticking with the idea of stem cell research (mostly the embryonic stem cell research) and its positive or negative effects, both on society and on the embryos they harvest the stem cells from. Tomorrow our Inquiry Contract Proposal paper is due meaning we have to tell why we want to do the topic we chose and explain how much we know about the topic already. I still like the idea of researching embryonic stem cell research because it is something I know little about and I can write about it without ranting.