Rafael MartinsPaul LonquichCSUN Emerging Issues in Regenerative Medicine13. March 2014Stem cell research and its controversiesWhen we talk about stem cell research our first reaction is to think of a new perspective on life, in which diseases can be treated and cured, lives can be saved and even the prolongation of life on earth crosses our minds. The ability to divide and self-renew makes stem cells hold great promise for the future. Stem cells are the only cells in the human body that can differentiate or specialize into other cell types. These capabilities mean that stem cell research increases every year, in which researchers are always looking for answers that no other technology could offer. As good as it may seem, stem cell research also has some controversy, where for some reasons the dream of curing and curing becomes further away than we can imagine (Mummery 46 - 47). Around 1800 cells were considered the building blocks of life and it was even proposed that cells had the ability to produce other cells. There have been many attempts to fertilize mammalian eggs outside of the actual human body. Later, in the early 1900s, researchers discovered that some cells had the ability to produce blood cells. In 1968, two brothers suffering from lymphopenic immunodeficiency and Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome were treated with the first bone marrow transplant ever performed (Bone Marrow Transplantation). Stem cell research has seen remarkable growth throughout history, and continues to grow today. In 1978, stem cells were found in human cord blood, and the first line of in vitro stem cells developed from mice was subsequently created in 1981. In 1995, experiments with a primate resulted... .... half of the paper ... ...rrow Transplantation." Bone Marrow Transplantation. Ed. Stuart M. Greenstein, MD. WebMD LLC, November 14, 2012. Web. March 12. 2014. Mummery, CL Stem Cells: Scientific Fact and Fiction. 1st ed. Amsterdam : Elsevier/Academic, 2011. Print.Murnaghan, Ian “History of Stem Cell Research.” Web. 10 March 2014. Murnaghan, Ian Controversy.” Stem cell controversy. ExploreStemCells, February 17, 2014. Web. March 12, 2014. Stöppler, Melissa Conrad, MD, and William C. Shiel Jr., MD. “Symptoms, Causes, Stem Cell Treatment: Why Are There Controversies About the Use of Stem Cells? - MedicineNet.” MedicineNet. MedicineNet, January 23, 2014. Web. March 12, 2014. Watson, Stephanie, and Ph.D. Craig Freudenrich. "How stem cells work." HowStuffWorks. HowStuffWorks.com, November 11, 2004. Web. March 12. 2014.