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 * Thalidomide and Stem-Cell Research **

Being pregnant is a majestic and beautiful thing that captivates hearts and sparks curiosity in people’s minds. Thinking that there is someone growing and developing inside an expecting mother’s womb is without a doubt one of the most beautiful things the world has witnessed. However, being pregnant brings morning sickness. Morning sickness is exactly what it says; a pregnant woman will feel nauseated in the morning. The one medicine found to help ease the pain of morning sickness is called Thalidomide. At the discovery of this medicine, pregnant women from all over jumped onto the opportunity to ease their pain. What they didn’t comprehend though was the long term effects it would have on not only them, but their unborn child. Georgina Harrison was four years old and excited to start school in the summer of 1997. She took no notice to the fear her family had for her to start school. “Would she be made fun of?” “Can she keep up with her classmates?” and “What if she doesn’t like herself?” are questions that probably swarmed her parents minds daily as the first day of kindergarten drew closer and closer. She would be starting school on artificial feet and with only two fingers on each hand. Her parents burdens were eased when they witnessed a boy ask their young daughter why she only has two fingers on each hand and she replied, “That’s just me.” However, while Georgina’s parents didn’t have to worry about her confidence, her father still felt guilty. He too, was severely harmed since birth like his daughter, except his daughter got it through heredity. Georgina’s grandmother used Thalidomide to ease her morning sickness while she was pregnant with her son, Georgina’s father. However, doctors didn’t completely test the drug, and her sons DNA was altered, causing him to be born with incomplete limbs. His daughter received the defect when she was born. Georgina Harrison and her father are just two out of many victims to Thalidomide. However, a controversy over the use of thalidomide has been going on since the side-effect of the drug was found. While thalidomide is shown to heal morning sickness and take away leprosy, it was also shown to help treat myeloma, which is cancer in the blood and bone marrow. Unfortunately, babies are shown to have severe birth defects because of thalidomide. The medicine can also cause seizures and when you take thalidomide you undergo constant pregnancy testing if you are a woman. There were many victims to thalidomide because of a failure to test further for side-effects. If we, as human beings, don’t test our new discoveries thoroughly, multiple lives could be lost or messed up forever, just like thalidomide. Stem cell research is a wonderful and recent discovery. Stem cells are cells that can develop into any type of cell that is needed in the body: brain cells, skin cells, blood cells, et cetera. Stem cells also divide without limit, so they won’t run out. They have been found to be able to create new healthy cells after cancer cells are killed by chemotherapy also. Scientists are constantly fantasizing about how fantastic of a discovery this is, and how many lives this can save. However, stem cells come from embryonic cells, and the extraction of them causes a human life to be killed. Some people argue that this is murder, like pulling the plug on someone who is brain dead. However, not only is it dangerous for whom we are getting the cells from, but it’s dangerous for the people receiving too. The stem cells can divide without limit into any cell we need, yes, but they also can divide into cells we don’t need like cancer cells. Stem cells also can create brain tumors, which are often deadly. Nobody wants what has happened with Thalidomide to happen again with stem cell research. The controversy is still being fought over today. The pros and cons are both very obvious, but are we willing to look past the cons of stem cell research for our own good? People like Georgina Harrison are still out there, with their lives eternally impaired by the “amazing” medications that their parents took when they were pregnant, all because they didn’t have a full understanding of the side effects. Do we want that to happen again with stem cell?