But It's No Fun . . .

. . . unless we can kill the baby:

From Secondhand Smoke:

Researchers at Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) have claimed publicly that they were able to derive embryonic stem cells without destroying the embryo. The story is international. Some of it is also clueless. The report in the the Guardian states that this purported breakthrough . . . "challenges" Bush. But the contrary is true. If there is indeed a way to derive embryonic stem cells without destroying an embryo it would validate Bush!

Here's the point: Bush's policy along with the arguments of ethicists such as Leon Kass, former chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics and Council member William Hurlbut (who is the driving force behind Altered Nuclear Transfer, another potential way to find pluripotent cells without creating or destroying embryos) have kept nascent human life from becoming widely viewed as mere fodder. Indeed, the reason this story is being reported so widely is that it could provide a way around the ethical problem with embryonic stem cell research. (Whether it would or not, I will leave for another day.) Indeed, there is much energy now being applied to find ethical ways to conduct this research on several fronts, which is all to the good.