Many people are confused when it comes to the differences between embryonic stem-cell research and adult stem-cell research, and why the Catholic Church is against one and supports the other. They are two totally different things, which people need to understand.

First, embryonic stem-cell research is killing a living person --- there's no other way of explaining it. An embryo is a 5-day-old human being. Scientists take this embryo and kill it to use its stem cells for research. Stem cells are cells that can grow into any type of cell or organ and are considered the most powerful type of human cell. These scientists say that using embryonic stem cells may help find cures for some diseases but they have not found any yet. Even if this would be true, embryos are human beings and we don't kill people for research experiments!

Another way to get stem cells for research is from adults. This is the way the Catholic Church supports. Stem cells are taken from adults by surgically removing some of them from bone marrow or taken from blood in a way like when you donate blood.

Another way to get stem cells is from the umbilical cord of a newborn baby. The umbilical cord is loaded with stem cells and the cord would get thrown out anyway after the baby is born. Both of these ways do not harm the person who donates it. The only stem cells that have ever been used to cure people are these adult stem cells --- not embryonic stem cells.

My mom was one of those people that got cured of leukemia by getting a stem-cell transplant. My mom was so sick and chemotherapy couldn't stop the leukemia from getting a lot worse, so she got a stem-cell transplant. My mom's donor was a 21-year-old man who had a surgery to get these stem cells from his bone marrow and they were given to my mom. He is fine and was only feeling a little sore for a week or so. It did not kill him or have any serious effects on him. It has been two years since then and my mom is as healthy as ever!

The way I see it is that if doctors and researchers can cure people like my mom using adult stem cells and no one has ever been cured using embryonic stem cells, why would we ever choose to kill defenseless people? Hopefully, someday the world will realize that it is against God's will to kill people, even if they are just embryos.

---CNS