Stem cell wars not yet ending

Two weeks after scientists announced that they could turn skin cells into stem cells without using human embryos, the debate over the implications heats up. Scientists and pundits take sides on the breakthrough's scientific and ethical implications.

In the Washington Post, Alan I. Leshner and James A. Thomson (one of two scientists who developed the technique), cautioned against a quick rejection of embryonic stem cell research. They also said that conservatives can't interpret the breakthrough as a vindication of George Bush's restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, noting that the breakthrough "depended entirely on previous embryonic stem cell research."

Wesley J. Smith, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, said Bush's policy is just one reason scientists explored less controversial research. Ethics - not just politics or funding - played a role, and Smith said the Bush policy helped by focusing on "the moral importance of the embryo." Thomson, one of the first scientists to isolate embryonic stem cells, has admitted his own ethical reservations about his research: "If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough. … I thought long and hard about whether I would do it."

Smith said he believes the new technique will affect human cloning more than embryonic stem cell research, since it has given scientists something they believed possible only through cloning: "Tailor-made, patient-specific, pluripotent stem cells." He predicts that President Bush's stem cell research policy will stand through the rest of his term, and embryonic stem cell research will play a lesser part in the 2008 election. A California stem cell agency that spent millions on embryonic stem cell research is now funding research that does not harm human embryos.

But what do the world's first cloners and stem cell researchers have to say? Ian Wilmut, the world's first cloner, has rejected cloning research for Thomson's new technique. And Thomson said the stem cell wars he helped begin will eventually end: "A decade from now, this will be just a funny historical footnote."