Embryonic Stem Cells & their Controversy (unbiased view)

okay so the topic in this video is what are stem cells but more specifically why are they so controversial there's kind of an argument going on in our society and the use of stem cells for scientific research and I really would hope that you by the end of this video can understand the controversy and at least make a defense pro or con depending on what side of the kind of the argument that you're on I do not plan to give my personal views the point of this video is simply to educate I hope the tone of my voice or the words that I use don't accidentally let my opinions be shown so let's go ahead and get started so you think of stem cells well before we get into the stem cells we need to turn back the clock a little bit and well here's a woman's egg cell and so fertilizing the egg so here is a female egg cell and it's haploid and if you remember from science class you know haploid is a vocabulary word that means it's a cell with half the total number of chromosomes that that a species normally has and humans we normally have 46 chromosomes egg cells are haploid which means they have 23 so in that blue nucleus of the picture are 23 chromosomes and here come many sperm cells from the soon-to-be father so here comes a whole bunch of sperm cells and in reality again men release millions and millions of sperm cells sperm cells also are haploid just like female egg cells so there's 23 chromosomes in each of these of five sperm cells that I've drawn and so fertilizing the egg well one sperm will eventually penetrate the egg and not the entire sperm by the way in the animation in a moment you're going to see just kind of like the head of the sperm will enter the egg and the nucleus of the egg will combine with the nucleus of the sperm here we go in our animation there goes the head of the sperm and the nucleus of the sperm fuses with the nucleus of the egg 23 chromosomes from the sperm 23 chromosomes from the egg you now have what's called a fertilized egg or a zygote with 46 chromosomes congratulations mom's pregnant well that mods I goat that fertilized egg that zygote is going to multiply by the cellular process called mitosis so for nine months that zygote is going to divide and become two cells and four and six and eight and so on so here we so like it says the Myto mitosis is going to divide the zygote one cell becomes two two become four by the way it's not a zygote anymore it's simply a growing embryo I guess and so here it divides again and divides again and divides again and again and again and again well let's zoom out a little bit let's zoom out a little bit and see kind of what it looks like in this early stage so when we zoom out we kind of see this round circular structure and I want to label a few things first of all overall this round object is what is called a blastocyst so the cells have divided many times and it forms this round object called a blastocyst it's filled with a fluid that white space in the middle is filled with a fluid it's not filled with empty hollow air the outer gray ring of cells eventually are going to become the placenta of the developing baby if the placenta is kind of like the sack that the baby will grow within now the lump of green in the middle that's what's important I want you to pay attention to this mass of inside cells right there in green these are embryonic stem cells eventually this green mass will grow into the baby but for now we're only you know perhaps are only a few days to a couple weeks into the development of the embryo so these green cells are stem cells and so I want you to pay attention to the green embryonic stem cells in the picture what's so unique about them well what's so unique about embryonic stem cells is that they don't have specified functions yet they have the potential to become any type of cell in the human body as the embryo develops further and further and further some of those stem cells will eventually become brain cells other stem cells will eventually become muscle cells other stem cells will eventually become liver cells but in this early stage they don't have specified functions yet these are what we call stem cells so if cell division continues for nine months eventually the embryo grows into a baby hopefully it's a healthy baby boy or healthy baby girl ten fingers ten toes hopefully the kid little kid lives happily ever after well let's kind of go into the research now okay when we look at stem-cell research so during research so here was our blastocyst again a stem cell might be removed from this blastocyst so let's remove one of the green stem cells from that blast assist now we're going to come back to this in a moment but unfortunately removing that stem cell destroys the remainder of the blastocyst we're going to come back to that in a few minutes because that kind of is the heart of the controversy but for now I want to focus on that green stem cell that's been removed that stem cell is going to be grown into a grouping of stem cells so let's remove the blastocyst it's sadly it's been destroyed in this process so that one green stem cell multiplies and multiplies and multiplies and multiplies and multiplies again this is all in a lab now this isn't in a woman's uterus or anything this is in a lab in a petri dish we have what's called here a line of stem cells if you ever heard the term a stem cell line it's a small group of stem cells derived from one original stem cell and so when we continue stemcells what's so neat about them what's so promising about them is stem cells are thought to be able to grow into new cells that might be able to replace damaged cells let me go through a little fictional example here here we have a motorcycle accident and so let's say that a gentleman a gentleman by the name of Lewis was involved in a motorcycle accident and as a result of the accident lewis sadly suffered brain damage you know he survived the crash the helmet provided him some protection but still the impact was fairly traumatic and he had some brain damage as a result well you know let's zoom on in that to the damaged area of his brain for a closer look when we zoom on in here's what we see notice those pink cells have a key that just popped up those pink cells are healthy cells and the gray cells pretend are the cells that were damaged in the motorcycle accident well what we what we're seeing and why research is so promising we're seeing that by placing stem cells around the damaged area that the the cells around the damaged area those implanted stem cells will grow into healthy brain cells hopefully as a way to treat and I don't want to go so far as to say cure but at least provide treatment that perhaps Lois in this fictional example can be treated and have a higher quality quality of life maybe regain some of the regain some of his abilities that perhaps he lost as a result of the accident so that's kind of what the promise of stem cell research is now in this example I had the stem cells become brain cells but research is promising in other areas you know here's a picture right here and you know in a moment pause the video and kind of check out the chart in a little more detail but here's a list of diseases and conditions or stem-cell treatment is promising or emerging we're developing treatments and you can see one of them on the list is traumatic brain injury kind of like the example we went over with our motorcycle accident you know in that example I had the stem cells turn into muscle cells excuse me in that example I had the stem cells turn into brain cells but again we're seeing that stem cells can be can be turned into muscle cells to help people with for instance muscular dystrophy and so there there's a great list of promise that comes from stem cell therapies so let's come back to this picture here where we talked about stem-cell research and so what stem cell research is trying to do is we're trying to learn more of the secrets we're trying to discover the secret of how stem cells of embryonic stem cells become specific cells we want to know what causes some embryonic stem cells to become muscle cells what causes other embryonic stem cells to become liver cells what causes I should say excuse me um can healthy cells can healthy cells be turned backwards into stem cells and therefore once we have them turn backwards into stem cells can we then turn them forward back into something else of our desire now these are some of the areas that are being researched and again as I mentioned what we're still kind of in the early stages of this research but the research is very promising so what about the controversy we really need to understand that so why is this controversial I kind of glossed over it a few moments ago now I really want to focus on that so remember the egg cell at the very beginning of the video we saw this egg cell with 23 chromosomes inside of the blue nucleus well here come all the sperm cells again five sperm cells each of the sperm cells has 23 chromosomes as well so the egg and the sperm are haploid cells and so one sperm is going to fertilize the egg just like we saw a moment ago and make a zygote a fertilized egg with 46 chromosomes I hope you remember what happens next that zygote is going to multiply it by the process of mitosis over and over and over again so here we see the zygote dividing by mitosis over and over and over and over again then we saw this earlier well let's zoom back out the cells continue to divide let's zoom back out and when we zoom back out we see that lump of cells again called a blastocyst we saw this picture earlier now we're going to get into why this process and in the root of this research is so controversial so during research we mentioned a moment ago that a stem cell will be removed from that blastocyst and and I brought this up earlier but I didn't really stress why this is such a controversial topic in our society during the extraction of that green embryonic stem cell the blastocyst is destroyed and this is where the topic gets controversial the argument that some make those who are against embryonic stem cell research the argument they make is that they feel that human life begins when a zygote is created human life begins when a fertilized egg is created so therefore if the blastocyst is destroyed that's the same thing as as killing of a human of a human being and so that is where we get into some of the controversies around embryonic stem cell research even though some very very good therapies and treatments are coming out of this research the argument is is that perhaps ethically this is not a sound practice because of the destroying of the blastocyst now if you're watching this video I hope you personally will do some reflection you know look at your ethics your morals perhaps your religious stance and I hope you will come up with your own view again I'm trying to leave my personal view out of this the topic of this video is hopefully to simply educate and so you think about well where do all these research companies and universities where do they get their stem cells from well if you've heard of a process called in vitro fertilization you may have heard of a test-tube baby well that's really what in vitro fertilization is in in vitro fertilization what it is it's a process used by parents who are not able to conceive a child the natural way through sex for whatever reason maybe there's there's some there's some kind of defect either with the male reproductive system or the female reproductive system and a let's say a married couple is just not able to conceive the natural way they can go to a clinic and have what's called in vitro fertilization done and what happens during this process so here's a picture of a woman's reproductive system and if we look at the two ovaries you might know that inside of each of the woman's ovaries are thousands and thousands of of egg cells and so during the process egg cells are removed surgically from the mothers ovaries so I took about a dozen or so egg cells out in this animation so there are the dozen egg cells that we that we just removed surgically from the mothers ovaries well what happens next in in vitro fertilization next sperm from the father will be used to fertilize each egg now hopefully you know that when it comes to getting sperm from a male you don't need surgery to get sperm from a male it's pretty easy to get sperm from a from a male so use your imagination so sperm will be will be taken from the male and will be used to fertilize each of these eggs and so therefore many zygotes are created this is all happening outside of the woman's body it's happening in a lab dish in a petri dish so again this is not happening naturally inside of a woman's body well when we continue to look at what happens next what happens with these twelve or so zygotes is eventually they're going to grow they're going to go through mitosis each one of them is going to grow into a blastocyst so here we have about a dozen or so blastocysts well what happens next a few of the blastocysts not all 12 a few of them I have three of them pulsing in the video right now three blastocysts perhaps are going to be implanted into the uterus of the hopeful mother so perhaps these three that are pulsing have been deemed to be healthier and and therefore the best chance to grow inside of the uterus of the woman so those three are going to be implanted now the reason they plant usually more than one is because the odds of all three successfully taking and growing into a baby are very slim chances are one or two or perhaps even all three of them aren't going to survive and you kind of got to go over then you start over with the next group of blastocysts but every now and then you know one of them might take and so what happens if the woman becomes pregnant well good for her at least she's going to know her and the father we are going to become parents but what happens with these leftover in my animation here in my video here what happens with these nine leftover blastocysts if a woman becomes pregnant she doesn't really need these anymore so what happens is they're they're simply destroyed as medical waste or here's where the research comes in a lot of times these blastocysts will be used in embryonic stem cell research so this is where this is where you know universities and private organizations that are doing research this is where they obtain their their stem cells from right here and so again keep in mind what the controversy is again is that some believe that life begins at the zygote and therefore each blastocyst that is destroyed is the same thing as killing a human life again your job is to weigh your own your own thoughts and come up with your own stance so let's wrap up this video and quickly go over what is the federal government's view on stem-cell research well March 9 2009 President Barack Obama signed executive order 1 3 5 and what this order did is that it removed funding restrictions that were placed on embryonic stem cell research under the George Bush administration George W Bush the second Bush George Bush to George Bush jr. and so during George Bush's presidency there were some restrictions that were placed on the funding of embryonic stem cell research with federal taxpayer money and so one what what what this executive order did was remove those those restrictions on funding and so this allowed more research to be done on embryonic stem cells and one of the quotes the comments that that Barack Obama made as he signed this executive order was that we make scientific decisions based on facts not ideology so you may not I you may not agree with this particular decision but this is our current view governmental view on stem-cell research on January 7th 2013 the Supreme Court rejected to hear a lawsuit that was meant to block executive order 13514 Court refused to hear this lawsuit the executive order was enacted and currently those restrictions that were under the George Bush years were have been removed so that really concludes this particular video on embryonic stem cell controversies again I hope I didn't include any tones in my voice I sure didn't mean to if I did I really wanted to just educate and inform and allow you the viewer to kind of weigh this information and and take it from there so I hope you found the video helpful thank you for watching

Channel: Beverly Biology

Views: 75,383

Rating: 4.8681316 out of 5

Keywords: Stem Cell (Field Of Study), Embryonic Stem Cell (Film Subject), Cell (Anatomical Structure), Biology (Media Genre), Fertilisation (Literature Subject), Embryology (Field Of Study)

Id: 3JutPkiKvOM

Length: 18min 42sec (1122 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 27 2014