Your Inner Healers

iPSC’s or induction of pluripotent stem cells are embryonic-like cells which can take the form of any of the 220 forms of human cells. It has the potential to cure cell-related diseases such as Diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. Scientists found that by injecting 4 reprogramming hormones found in pluripotent embryonic cells, into mice skin cells through retroviruses. By doing so, skin cells change to iPSC cells which can be used to form any other kind of cells. Some problems associated with iPSC’s are that the retroviruses used to introduce the hormones to the cell, linger and cause cancers in the adult mice, but the problem can be fixed by replacing the retroviruses with the adenovirus.  Also, there are ethical concerns because iPSC’s can be used to create human embryos.  iPSC’s have a huge potential to cure diseases and fight aging, but there still is a lot more research needed before it can be tried on humans. Some ethical concerns are that if iPSC's do cure diseases like Diabetes and Parkinson's Disease, that it will only be available to the rich who can afford it and not to those who need it.