Essay

The reason that I choose Ernest McCulloch as my nominee for the science hall of fame, is he is a great scientist who has achieved many feats in his lifetime. Ernest McCulloch is most famous for his discovery of stem cells. Another reason that Ernest McCulloch deserves to be in the science hack of fame is, he made great advances in cancer research revolving around leukemia. Ernest McCulloch also went to the University of Toronto graduating as a MD in 1948. Upon graduation he started research at the Lister institute in London.

One really good reason that Ernest McCulloch should be administered into the science hall of fame is he made a huge discovery in the science community when Ernest and his partner/ co-discoverer James till, discovered stem cells. Ernest and till discovered stem cells in 1957, they discovered stem cells at the Ontario cancer institute. The importances of stem cells are that they can replace other cells that are missing. Stem cells are essentially a blank cell that can change into any like cells that they are around. Originally stem cells were only found in aborted fetuses but after additional research scientists have concluded that you can get stem cells from all mammals.

After Ernest McCulloch’s discovery of stem cells Ernest went on to do other great things, In addition to his research career, Dr. McCulloch worked tirelessly on numerous provincial, national and international advisory committees and provided leadership for the research division at the Ontario Cancer Institute. In 1974 Ernest became a member of the royal society of Canada. In 1988 he became a fellow officer of the order of Canada, and in 1999 he was made a fellow of the royal society of London. Finally in 2004 Ernest was inducted into the Canadian medical hall of fame. Ernest also holds the distinguished title of university professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto.

Now after so many years since stem cells were discovered there has been many scientific advancements, with the help of stem cells we can now cure someone who has a muscular disease or a broken spine, what happens is the stem cells are injected into the body where the problem has occurred, and the stem cells morph themselves into that cell. There are several types of stem cells. The first stem cells that were discovered by Dr. McCulloch were fetal. Fetal stem cells are stem cells that are found in the fetuses of aborted children. The other types of stem cells are embryonic, adult and Amniotic. Embryonic stem cells are stem cells Embryonic stem cell lines (ES cell lines) are cultures of cells derived from the epiblast tissue of the inner cell mass (ICM) of a blastocyst or earlier morula stage embryos. Adult stem cells are just stem cells found in any fully developed organism, adult stem cells are found every where and in every multi celled organism. Amniotic stem cells are multipotent stem cells which are found in amniotic fluid. These stem cells are very active and expand extensively without feeders. Some other tests that McCulloch has done are with bone marrow and injecting it into irradiated mice, after the test the mice showed signs of nodules in their spleens in proportion to the amount of bone marrow cells injected into the mice, this experiment proves that there may also be stem cells in bone marrow. The most recent of McCulloch’s experiments has been cellular and molecular mechanisms affecting the growth of malignant blast stem cells obtained from the blood of patients with Acute Myeloblastic Leukemia. In conclusion I believe that Ernest McCulloch should be a nominee for the next member of the Canadian science hall of fame. Ernest has experimented with many different scientific breakthroughs in the science community including the discovery of stem cells and many other tests with stem cells. Dr McCulloch’s discovery of stem cells has saved many lives and has put our knowledge of the human body far above any thing we knew before. Also when Ernest was teaching at U of T he was the head of the science department and a respected teacher. A final reason is that Ernest proved the full potential of what stem cells can do and how they can save many lives and make many lives easier.