The Great Stem Cell Debate

The mention of stem cells causes a rise in adrenalin in two groups of people: biomedical engineers and fundamentalists.  Of course, it doesn't take too much of any science to offend the latter group.  The president who left office several days ago was a hero to fundamentalists, not for his war on Iraq which killed 100,000 people, but for his stem cell ban.  Many of that religious persuasion believed that he 'saved babies' through this ban on the use of most embryonic stem cells

 The truth is that not a single 'baby was saved' by the ban because these  embryonic stem cell lines are made from material that would otherwise literally be thrown in the trash. Banning them did not 'save' a single blastocyst, and it came at the cost of delaying or denying lifesaving treatment to millions of people.  

Nonetheless, George Bush bamboozled the fundamentalists into believing that he was the second son of god for doing so.  The ugly truth is that eight years of  research into stem cell therapy was wasted for political gain.

Time.com has an article this week called, Stem Cell Research: The Quest Resumes which illuminates the 8-year hiatus on important research, delayed by an incompetent president and a knot of Bible-thumpers. Hope is on the way now that we have a science-friendly in the White House once again.