Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent, meaning they are able to grow (i.e. differentiate) into all derivatives of the three primary germ layers: ectoderm, endoderm and mesoderm.

Adult stem cells are undifferentiated cells, found throughout the body after embryonic development, that multiply by cell division to replenish dying cells and regenerate damaged tissues.

Therapeutic cloning is cloning which is performed for the purpose of medical treatment. For example, it could theoretically be used to grow a replacement organ, to generate skin for a burn victim, or to create nerve cells for someone suffering from brain damage or a neurological condition. Therapeutic cloning is closely related to reproductive cloning, in which a copy of an organism is produced, but the two have very different end goals.

The advantage to therapeutic cloning in medical treatment is that it would allow doctors to grow replacements for missing and damaged body parts for their patients. This would eliminate organ and tissue shortages, ensuring that every patient who required something like a new liver or new kidneys could get what he or she needed.

There are some definite ethical concerns with therapeutic cloning. For people who do not share these beliefs, many types of cloning are still fraught with ethical problems, ranging from questions about how accessible such techniques are to the general public to concerns that problems might arise with cloned tissue which will only be apparent after years of use.

Embryonic-like cells have been found in umbilical cord blood. Stem cells from umbilical cord blood are known to treat nearly 80 diseases, and have been used in more than 20,000 transplants worldwide. In addition to the value of these stem cells today, research is ongoing for a number of potential medical miracles in the future. But making the decision to save your baby's cord blood takes thoughtful consideration. Once you've learned all the facts, you won't trust anyone else but Cryo-Cell Cord Blood Bank to preserve this potential medical miracle.

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The classical definition of a stem cell requires that it possess two properties:
.Self-renewal - the ability to go through numerous cycles of cell division while maintaining the undifferentiated state.
.Potency - the capacity to differentiate into specialized cell types. In the strictest sense, this requires stem cells to be either totipotent or pluripotent - to be able to give rise to any mature cell type, although multipotent or unipotent progenitor cells are sometimes referred to as stem cells.
http://www.news-medical.net/health/Stem-Cell-Properties.aspx