Stem cell update: turns out, we don't need embryos (or even eggs) after all that hype

After all that hype about how embryo-destructive stem cell research was necessary to save people suffering from disease etc., it turns out (and see here for a UK version of the story)that one doesn't need to destroy embryos (at least, not mice embryos) in order to get the pluripotent cell that carry the promises cited by researchers and advocates of (is it fair to say, relatively unlimited?) stem cell research.

Great news, but at the moment, of course, even better news for mice, since the results are based on research done with mice, not with people, and there are significant difficulties with carrying them over into therapeutic technologies. Not to mention that the side-stepping of one ethical problem hardly obviates them all...but whatever. Now we can say even more emphatically, 'yes I'm for stem cell research when it uses such pluripotent cells or adult stem cells, and doesn't have to destroy embryos or rely on the morally dubious harvesting of eggs from women.' Coincidence that this comes on the eve of the voting on a bill to try to override President Bush's current limitations on research? hmmm...

Interesting report of a recent bioethics conference on totipotency and then a reaction to the news on the First Things blog, particularly helpful in the scientific and ethical distinction between pluripotent and totipotent cells, as well as human life and human beings. My thought: wow, because of a interdisciplinary conversation between Christians thinkers, who care quite a lot about this issue, and others (who may are may not agree) the result is that they all actually think harder and better about both the ethics and the science together, not artificially separated from each other! Their conversation continues; I just wish the general public would follow suit...