Stem cell research took a positive jump recently when Obama reversed a Bush decision. Immediately some Christians and Right to Lifers jumped on the bandwagon with the same old tired rhetoric about embryos and how it was wrong to use them for research.
Ignoring the religious implications the most recent and increasing successful source for stem cells is not from embryos but adults, and not the dead kind. The multiplication technologies are also improving so that a small number of stem cells can be turned into a larger number quite quickly.
The majority of the research is no longer focused on where to get the stem cells, even skin cells can be turned into stem cells with the most recent technologies, but rather how to turn them on. The majority of the focus is how to trigger the latent stem cell into say a heart muscle cell, or a heart valve cell, or a nerve cell etc.
It is easy to assign some attribute to research in the name of ethics or morals. Saying that an embryo has a soul for example piles up the emotional content. As the research now shifts away from embryos altogether a new excuse is needed, as soon as many learn that embryo research is diminishing that is, most complainers have not caught up with the latest developments.
The potential of the research is exciting, repairing spinal cords for para and quadriplegics and other currently impossible repairs to different systems within the body. There is however a lot of research required before this becomes commonplace.
There are those who say that this is playing God, but is it any less so than curing cancer or transplanting a heart?
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