Today was the day of the final, and me and Jesus spent the day finishing up our term papers. Mine is nearly complete, and Jesus' is as well. Over the break we will be emailing Dr. Jay Schneider, a scientist currently studying stem cells at UT Southwestern. Hopefully he will be able to show us the process like we had originally planned.

Winter break is coming up soon! We will also try to schedule a meeting with Dr. Schneider over the break.

With our term paper due date coming up soon, and finals next week, we spent the day working on our papers. The term papers are about our personal experiences in our research and what we have learned about our thesis. While it will have information about our topic, the main focus will be about the progress we have made.

Representatives from Jostens are coming today, many of us forgot to fill out the order sheets for the graduation packets. We spent a couple of minutes filling those out. The semester term paper is due in a few days and even though we still have some time both David and I have decided to start working on them to reflect on what we have learned this semester. Our meeting with Dr. Grinnell has left us with new questions that we are still trying to research.

In the previous post we discussed one of the main factors that prevents the formation of universal ethics guidelines with stem. One thing we would like to emphasize is that there is no issue with finding solutions to diseases and defects with stem cells, research can still be done. The problem individuals and organizations have is with the therapy used in the process.


http://www.eurostemcell.org/factsheet/embyronic-stem-cell-research-ethical-dilemma

This article discusses many of the issues we discussed with Dr. Grinnell including the issue of "what moral principle should we choose?"

•  "The duty to prevent or alleviate suffering"
•  "The duty to respect the value of human life"

     As mentioned in the last post one factor that affects the establishment of universal ethics guidelines are the inter-looped cultural differences. For example, in embryonic stem cells one of the biggest questions is what defines "Death."

     There are four main time periods where the definition of death shifts.

•      Cell Viability- 1month

•      Development Arrest- up to 4 months
• cell growth is stunt meaning that no further development could take place

•      Cardiovascular- 5-9 months
• Heart stops

•      Neurological- 7-9 months
• Brain can no longer function (brain dead)

http://euthanasia.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000197

This article from pro con reflects some of the different descriptions of what death is considered.

Over the break, me and Jesus visited Dr. Grinnell at UT Southwestern.
The trip there was pretty bad though, my dad dropped us off at the south campus, while his office was in the north campus. It took us about half an hour to walk over, and we showed up late.

However, once we were there, the meeting itself was very productive and we were able to ask our questions and learned much about the process.
I took notes on the discussion, and will be using them for further research and in our presentation.

Dr. Grinnell had a PowerPoint presentation that explained multiple types of stem cells and discussed the definition of "Death" to explain when "Life" is considered.