Synthesized Blood

In three years, patients will be able to receive synthetic blood made from the stem cells of spare IVF embryos. The NHS Blood and Transplant, the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and the Welcome Trust, are the organizations spearheading this effort. The main goal of this project is to be able to synthesize the o negative blood, the universal donor. Naturally this blood type is very rare so synthesizing it would be a major step forward in relieving blood banks. The benefit of this blood other than its supply is that it would disease free. It would have the chance of being contaminated with HIV, hepatitis, or other diseases transferred by transfusion.
However, with stem cell research comes controversy. Many ethical issues would be raised by this synthesized blood. First off many people do not believe in stem cell research as it is, so that poses one issue. Another issue would be that we would be using blood from someone that never existed. In theory though, this process would allow one embryo would be able to provide blood for an entire nation.

The project is being led by Marc Turner of Edinburgh Univerisity, and British are leading the wasy in this research. Other countries have also been doing research into this such as, Sweden, France, and Austrailia. Recently the United States has removed their ban on stem cell research expect them to catch up as well.

This project is interesting because it would solve a major problem in medicine. If their attempts to synthesize blood are successful, we no longer would have to rely on donors, and there would always be blood availble for transfusion. It would also eliminate the concern of contaminated blood during transfusion.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/british-scientists-to-create-synthetic-blood-1651715.html