However, there still exists a great deal of social and scientific uncertainty surrounding embryonic stem cell research, which will only be overcome through years of intensive research and by gaining the acceptance of the public.
Furthermore, very promising treatments of serious diseases with adult stem cells have already been attempted. The advantage of adult stem cells over embryonic stem cells is that there are no rejection issues, because the stem cells are from the same body.For over 30 years, bone marrow and more recently umbilical cord blood stem cells have been used to treat cancer patients with conditions such as leukemia and lymphoma. During chemotherapy, most growing cells are killed by the cytotoxic agents. These agents not only kill the leukemia or neoplastic cells, but also those which release the stem cells from the bone marrow. It is this unfortunate side effect of the chemotherapy that the Stem Cell Transplant attempts to reverse; by introducing a Donor's healthy Stem Cells the damaged or destroyed Blood Producing Cells of the patient are replaced. In all current Stem Cell treatments obtaining Stem Cells from a matched Donor is preferable to using the patients own. If (always as a last resort and usually because no matched Donor can be found) it is deemed necessary for the patients own stem cells to be used and the patient has not stored their own collection of stem cells (umbilical cord blood), bone marrow samples must therefore be removed before chemotherapy, and are re-injected afterwards
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