Topic > The Role of Regenerative Medicine in Modern Warfare

It is a sad truth that aggression and warfare have always been part of human history. There has never been a time when the world globally has been at peace in its entirety. Unfortunately, a closer look at events on the international scene does not offer us even a glimmer of hope for a deviation from this pattern in the near future. With the progress and development of science and technology, increasingly sophisticated weapons are produced, which have an enormously devastating impact on the conduct of warfare. (ICRC, 2013) (Chinedu Cletus Ude, 2018) International law falls short when it comes to enforcing the ban on many of the deadliest. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Although the use of chemical and biological weapons has been prohibited by international humanitarian law, the reality shows lack of respect for international conventions. (ICRC, 2013) Recent cases include Yemen or Syria. I believe that if the result of scientific and technological progress is often responsible for human suffering, it can and must also be used to remedy it. Therefore, in my research, I decided to attempt to examine the possible positive impact of regenerative medicine in modern warfare. Medical, scientific and descriptive approaches were adopted as the basis for the analysis. Modern Warfare: Technology has always been the source of improved tools of warfare. In the contemporary age, systematic research in science and medicine has preconditioned and made feasible the development of new technologies and innovations intended for use by both militaries and civilians. This development had effects on both society and the nature of warfare. (Modern-Warfare, 2018) (Bohr, 2018) The one who would now be known as the father of chemical warfare and who first exploited chemical weapons was actually his guinea pig to test his invention firsthand. On October 2, 1915, Fritz Haber, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin, stepped into the yellow-green cloud of chlorine gas on the ground that was being used for troop exercises at the time. The test was successful. Haber, a war enthusiast, began coughing rapidly and turned pale, so he had to be carried on a stretcher. (Modern-Warfare, 2018) (Bohr, 2018)About three weeks later, German forces used this chemical agent for the first time on a mass scale during combat on the Western Front near the Flemish city of Ypres in Belgium, where they deployed an approximate amount of 150 tons of substance. This marked the first time in world history, successful use of chemical weapons on a mass scale against humans. What would ensue in this last fight was a more widespread use of chemical weapons. Although the Allies condemned this incident, they too began using chemical agents in the field. (Modern-Warfare, 2018) (Bohr, 2018) (Hughes, Chemical Weapons: The Day the First Poison Gas Attack Changed the Face of War Forever, 2016) Innovations like this are mostly conducted in times of conflict . Inventions such as the telephone, fighter plane, and many others were explored during times of conflict. This, unsurprisingly, was also when CBRN (Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear) weapons were examined. The nuclear bomb came out towards the end of World War II, and that's where we can see a clear path to modern warfare. The First and Second World Wars served as a bridge to the emergence of modern warfare. A type of conflict where the quantity iscompromised on quality. Aspects of warfare that are more practical and involve high damage and raw destructive power are preferred over older, more primitive methods of combat. (Modern-Warfare, 2018) (Bohr, 2018) However, nations are spending more on the destructive capabilities of technology rather than the human condition. What we can see as a common factor in most weapons today are physical and exploit the inability of living organisms to heal fast enough. The damage is done faster or much more severely than the body can repair it. Therefore current funding is slowly but steadily shifted towards medical advances. (Modern-Warfare, 2018) (Bohr, 2018) Regenerative Medicine: Regenerative medicine is a branch of translational research in tissue engineering and molecular biology that deals with the "process of replacing, engineering, or regenerating cells, tissues, or human organs to restore or re-establish normal function". This field promises to engineer damaged tissues and organs by stimulating the body's repair mechanisms to functionally heal previously irreparable tissues or organs. Treatments today can be summarized in three roots; Tissue engineering and biomaterials, cell therapies, medical devices and artificial organs. The main problem with all these is that they need a surgical environment for treatment. This means they cannot be deployed on a large scale in the field. That's why researchers are currently looking at other storable and durable opportunities that are easy to apply. While it is not currently possible to use anything resembling these guidelines, or simply does not exist, it is being experimented with. Stem cells have been a site for many to turn to. Stem cells are cells that have the unique ability to develop into any specialized cell in the body. They can undergo self-renewal, which means they can undergo multilineage differentiation and form terminally differentiated cells. Whether it's a nerve or a red blood cell, they can do it all. This is important because our body is made up of cells, most of which are specialized to perform a specific task, like red blood cells that carry oxygen in the blood, but cannot divide. Stem cells create new cells for the body as it grows or replace lost or damaged cells. They have two properties that allow them to do this; they can divide over and over to produce new cells, and they can transform into any cell as they do so. (Nesti, 2011)There are two main groups of stem cells in the human body; Embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. Embryonic stem cells: Embryonic stem cells constitute the cellular reserve for growing embryos. These stem cells are pluripotent, meaning they can develop into any cell in the body. They arise from the development of embryos. Stem cells: These cells provide new cells to organisms as they grow to replace lost or damaged cells. They are called multipotent, which means they can only develop in one set of cells, not all. These arise from the body at any stage and at any age. Adult stem cells are present in every tissue of the body, from the brain to internal organs and adipose tissue. (Tiryaki, Tiryaki, Calabrese, & Findikli, 2016) These cells can be collected from any part of the body but usually the number of cells collected is very limited, so it is necessary to send them to a laboratory and culture them in order to obtain enough cells to use astreatment modalities. On the other hand, adipose tissue contains many more stem cells than other tissues. These are called fat-derived or adipose tissue-derived stem cells (ADSCs). Due to the large number of ADSCs in fat and the ease of harvesting adipose tissue from the body without causing any damage to vital functions, adipose tissue has become the primary source of stem cells in modern medicine. In practice, adipose tissue is surgically removed from the body using liposuction cannulae in a very simple way. It then goes through a separation process where enzymes are introduced to separate the stem cells from the adipose tissue and finally centrifuged for total separation. 500cc of lipoaspirate allows us to obtain 200 million regenerative cells. The entire process of fat harvesting and stem cell isolation takes approximately 1.5-2 hours. Thanks to these characteristics, adipose tissue-derived stem cells may be an ideal candidate for global militaries to consider as treatments. However, like everything, stem cells have shortcomings that make them severely limited for military use. Although the only stem cell lineage among those indicated above, capable of proving highly useful in military use, are stem cells derived from adipose tissue, all of this however requires surgical treatment, both in extraction and insertion . Stem cells are also fragile, as they are not durable enough to withstand almost any conditions other than laboratory conditions. They are open to many types of exposure and have a limited life. Stem cell treatment is also limited, so they can be used for radiological damage to treat cancer or radiation exposure, but almost nothing other than chemical or biological threats. This means that traditional healing of combat wounds is not possible. Stem cell treatments are also too expensive for widespread use. Future of regenerative medicine in the military: This does not mean that regenerative medicine will stop here. There are still many possibilities and new treatments are needed. For many people, feasible treatments are needed. Exosomes could be the solution to this. Cells communicate with each other using cytokinesis. These are proteins excreted by one cell that tell another cell what to do. Stem cells work on the same basis, creating a repair sequence in all cells. Exosomes are small packets that come out of the outer wall of cells. (BMCBIOL, 2016) They can transport proteins and mRNA. However, what is important about exosomes is that they can carry mRNA. This is important, because mRNA makes proteins. It's like a set of instructions for proteins to be synthesized. These proteins can be anything from building blocks to chemical signals. What links exosomes to stem cells, you ask? Exosomes can be found in culture media when a stem cell is grown or cultured. (Hildreth, 2017) Due to exosomes containing mRNA and cytokinesis, it has been proposed to harvest them and inject them into a patient to stimulate repair. However, all this is not so simple. (Centeno, 2018) An exosome is just like a missile launched towards a target cell by a stem cell. It has a payload, which can contain proteins to tell the cell what to do or mRNA to force the recipient cell to produce the proteins the stem cell needs. This can be used for repair. (BMCBIOL, 2016) What complicates these exosomes is what makes stem cells admirable. The cells.