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Stem Cell Article (1) When were stem cells first taken from a human embryo? James A. Thompson in his laboratory at the University of Wisconsin in 1998 was one of the two people that were able to extract a stem cell for the first time (2) Why is obtaining stem cells from a human embryo so controversial? the reason that this issue is so controversial is because when you extract stem cells you have to destroy an embryo which is killing a future person which is inhumane because we are killing babies when we do this. Also it is controversial because some people think that we are going to far when we are tampering with humans that much and altering the way they develop (3) What was/is the source of human embryos for stem cell research? The source of the embryos for the stem cell research are the sperm and eggs cells that are not wanted (4) What is a stem cell? They are the cells that are universal and that can be turned into any of the body 220 types of cells (5) What diseases do we think we could treat with stem cells? Scientists think that they could possibly treat diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s by testing them in petri dishes. (6) Dr. Thomson is in the news again because he has turned ordinary skin cells into stem cells. How did he do this? He discovered that he could do this by adding four genes to ordinary adult skin