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During the autologous transplantation of stems cells from bone marrow to produce new blood cells why all the other stem cells other than the one obtained are destroyed?

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Autologous stem cell transplants are used to treat individuals who have had their bone marrow destroyed or damaged by diseases such as lymphomas or by irradiation or cancer treatments. As they are damaged and potentially cancerous, they are removed. They are then replaced in the transplant. The whole idea is to destroy all the cells before transplanting the marrow back.

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thank you So the stem cell is obtained from another part of the body and transplanted into the bone marrow and not obtained from the bone marrow itself? –  Mohammad May 20 '13 at 21:12
or to make it simple where is the stem cell obtained from ? –  Mohammad May 20 '13 at 21:15
Although most of these stem cells are in the bone marrow, there are also some in the blood and these are collected in order to perform an autologous transplant. –  Alan Boyd May 20 '13 at 21:28
What Alan said is not always true, they can be taken from the blood or bone. Certain chemicals can cause the cells to leave the bone marrow to collect them in the blood. They are collected when you are in remission or free of any disease and stored, frozen. Then if the disease comes back, every cell is destroyed (hopefully killing every cancer cell) then the frozen stem cells are transplanted back to reconstitute the immune system. This can be repeated but typically shouldn't need to be. –  AndroidPenguin May 20 '13 at 23:07
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