Scepticism around the two articals of Drs Woo Hwang and Shin Moon about stem cell - Essay Example

still available, which led to the development of Human Embryonic stem cells technology as well as establishing the firm legislature concerning stem cell research, both in the USA and the rest of the world (National Right to Live) However, in order for human embryonic stem cell research to have practical and medical value, further research was necessary involving somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) technology, in order to create embryos that are genetically identical to the somatic cell that donated the genetic material, creating an unlimited amount of stem cells to be used for research, as well as a high rate of success for replacement and transplantation therapies.

This raised further problems concerning human cloning, as the embryos created would contain the same genetic material as the host, creating a clone. As the scientific and ethical debate continued, extensive research was still being made, leading to the breakthrough, and later discredited research of Woo Hwang and Shin Moon. In two papers, entitled “Evidence of a Pluripotent Human Embryonic Stem Cell Line Derived from a Cloned Blastocyst” published in the journal Science on 12 March, 2004 and “Patient-Specific Embryonic Stem Cells Derived from Human SCNT Blastocysts” published in Science on 17 June, 2005, Woo Hwang and Shin Moon as primary researchers claimed that they managed to create human embryonic stem cells from a cloned embryo.

In the 2004 research, the researchers begin with a clear and concise explanation of the benefits of the procedure, as well as the processes involved in the research. They introduce us to the concept therapeutic cloning, which is concerned with the concept of “transferring a nucleus of a somatic cell into an enucleated donor oocyte” (Hwang et al, 2004). Theoretically, as the researchers state, the cytoplasm of the oocyte would deactivate certain genes concerned with somatic functions and would activate the embryonic genes located within the nucleus concerned