Fetal tissue is the tissue 8 weeks after consumption to the time of birth. It is taken from legal abortions, hospitals, and tissue donation banks and then used in research to cure life threatening diseases! These tissues hold promise to regrow or repair defects and damages in the body since they are used to grow the baby in the first place.
What we know: neurons make up our behavior. Damage to these & the parts of our brain that they make up makes changes in behavior and personality. This damage is very hard to repair!
What we want to do: use fetal tissue to repair or regrow the neurons that are damaged.
What can it heal? Things like Parkinsons, AIDS, strokes, MS, brain tumors, and spinal cord injuries. As you may know, things like AIDS, MS, and Parkinsons are not curable. They are deathly diseases. If we use this to cure these diseases we can change thousands of lives. The only question is if it is ethical or not. They also use this tissue to research about birth defects in the tissue. Which can also cure life threatening diseases. This tissue is also more useful because it is more susceptible to rejection, where adult cells are not.
Fetal tissue research and the use of it can cure many diseases that are incurable today. The biggest debate is ethical questions like abortion. In fact, it was banned in Bush's Administration because of abortion. People debated that it wasn't ethical because it promoted abortion & these people were strongly against abortion! They argued that people who were selling the fetal tissues were selling "baby body parts". The research then continued in Clinton's first year of administration, in 1975. It was first used in the 1920's to unsuccessfully treat diabetes but then later used to cure things like Polio. Ethics still continue today. People argue about many things. Who should give consent for the actual use of the tissue? Will it promote abortion? Are fetal rights violated by using this tissue? Is it even beneficial? Many people have many different answers to these questions, but how do we all come to a consensus with so many different, strong opinions?
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