Embryonic stem cells have created quite a controversy not only among scientists, but also among ordinary people for some time now. Despite their amazing functional property of regenerating tissue, the methods presently used to obtain them that require the destruction of a human embryo or therapeutic cloning has generated numerous debates from the social and ethnical point of view.

The idea of turning skin cells into stem cells came as an alternative to the controversy surrounding the embryonic stem cells, proving to be useful in modern medicine and eliminating all the social and ethic issues that could stay in the way of its future development.

Researchers have recently announced conducting a successful experiment, by curing mice of sickle cell anemia, which can cause painfully circulatory problems, kidney failures and strokes. This was a first step towards a new method of curing an inherited disease or reversing the progress of a potentially fatal one.

In spite of the successful experiment, scientists have declared that using this method on human patients will not happen in the near future, as the element on which this is based – the use of gene-altered viruses that change the cells’ gene activity – could potentially determine tumor apparition.

Modern medicine can cure the sickle cell anemia only by bone marrow transplants, but the chance of finding a donor is pretty low, as no more than 20% of the patients are able to find a donor whose tissue type will not trigger immunological problems, and even if they find the donor, there still remains a 20% chance that the transplant fails.

For the time being, the study of embryonic stem cells will continue. Rudolph Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute for Biometrical Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts stated that “All the progress in this field was only possible because we had embryonic stem cells to work with first. We need to make more ES cells and really define which are going to be the best ones for different applications."