Blood Doping

Blood doping is an practice that involves taking an athlete's blood to hold until the competition. The purpose of this is to boost the number of red blood cells through the athlete's blood stream giving more oxygen to the muscles in order to enhance the athlete's performance. This method is commonly used by athletes who compete in sports that involves having high endurance and stamina.

The process for blood doping is fairly simple. The first step to blood doping is taking the blood from the athlete, the blood is taken for several weeks before the competition. The athlete's blood is then taken and frozen, freezing the blood will keep it fresh so the red blood cells wouldn't die. The blood is then transfused back into the athlete 1-7 days before the competition. If the procedure is successful, this will increase the hemoglobin in the athlete's blood stream which will enhance the athlete's performance in the competition.

There are other several ways to blood doping. The blood doesn't have to be taken from the athlete, it can be taken from a matching blood donor. This method however will increase the risk of getting an infection or illness. Another method for blood doping is a chemical called EPO which is used for treating patients who have kidney disease. EPO controls the red blood cell production.

This method being used in sports is illegal and considered cheating since the athlete didn't work hard to have that much level of red blood cells. This procedure is similar to steroids since steroids will enhance the patient giving him/her the upper hand even though they didn't train or work hard enough to have that much strenght.

I personally think that blood doping should not be used by our beloved athletes. I think that they should train and work hard to meet their goals of becoming one of the best in what they do.

What Is A Designer Baby?

Designer Baby is the term used to describe the modification of embryos for genetic disorders and replacing them with healthy embryos so that the child can be born the way it was desired to be. This will reduce the chance of the baby being born with a genetic disorder or any genetic diseases. They can possibly be used for enhancing certain characteristics of a child. They have done this for animals for tests but is currently illegal for humans. In the process, scientists would use techniques that involves using InVitro Fertilization to fertilize an embryo containing a sperm and have genetic engineers to modify the embryo's DNA, the embryo is then introduced to the mother's womb.

Though this seems promising, we still don't know if this is safe for humans to take. Even if it is safe, this discovery could be abused by humans in the near future. If this comes to being legal in the near future, a lot of people would probably would like their children to have certain traits and characteristics. Competitions won't really matter due to people with special enhancements on certain sports or games since they won't really need practice because they are made to do have these characteristics.

In the video game "Metal Gear Solid 4", the player takes the role of a war veteran codenamed: Snake. In the game, Snake has certain enhanced feats that other soldiers don't have. He soon realizes that he was a designed baby meaning he was man-made. This gives us the idea that we could use this for military purposes to protect us from terrorism or any other threats. But then again, when he realizes this, he breaks down almost leading himself to suicide, referring to himself as a "machine" since he was man-made. This gives us the idea that humans will always have the human nature to feel emotions and shouldn't be played with.

This topic about designing babies has been argued and debated with on the Internet and even scientists themselves. Some disagrees of legalizing this mostly because of religious reasons. They consider the process as "playing the role of God". The scientists pretty much "create" and "design" these babies. If we were to look at this at a Catholic perspective this would be considered "bad" since we're not to interfere with God's "plans". But then again, this may be a plan that he gave for us but I personally disagree at the fact that its God's plan to have us design our own children.

Designing babies can be a good thing if it is put to good use, but should never be abused. A wise man once said that with great power, comes great responsibility, so we could choose to use this power for the good of mankind or just to add it to the problems that we already have. This choice lies in the hands of the scientists that are working on Designer Babies

http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html

http://www.bionetonline.org/English/content/db_cont1.htm

Stem Cell Therapies

First of all, if you don't know what stem cells are here's a brief introduction. Stem cells are these cells are found in cells, and are commonly found in multi-cellular organisms. Their purpose is to regenerate a dead cell by turning from a regular stem cell to a certain cell that would replace the dead cell. Stem cells wait for signals to determine what they're going to become. When the cell recieves the signal, it would turn on certain genes and make new proteins, this is the differentiating phase of the cell. The cell will multiply until the differentiating process is done. It will then turn to the cell it was supposed to become.

This ability of theirs can be used for stem cell therapy which can be used to replace deceased cells with new healthy ones. Stem cell therapy is used to signal the cell to differentiate to a certain cell that's needed. This may sound very good and might be the answer to curing any disease in the world. But, we still haven't studied stem cells through and more research is required especially the study of their behaviour. Scientists today are trying to study stem cell behaviour so that they could control how the cell would turn out to be.

Stem Cell Therapy can have miraculous works for certail people with missing body parts so they would be able the things they weren't able to do, but the price for missing body parts would be huge since its a long process. There are still a lot of research to be done because of the possibilities of defects to the cells.

Stem Cell Therapy is a great solution to certain diseases and works miraculously, But there's still a lot to be done to perfect this solution.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/stemcells/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell_treatments