CNN: Stem Cell Therapies Years Away

This is a better story than most about the stem cell debate. Except, of course, that CNN and the quoted scientists state that stem cell therapies are years away—without mentioning that for many human conditions they are already in human trials. But those don’t count. They aren’t embryonic.

Toward the end of the piece, a scientist complains that there hasn’t been a sufficient discussion of the potential scientific benefits of stem cell research, which of course in this jargon, means ESCR. This isn’t true. The potential curative aspects have been hyped to the hilt. We don’t hear as much about the more abstract scientific issues, but that is because the science propagandists don’t think they can win the debate on that front. Besides, his complaint misses the point: This isn’t a science debate so much as a disagreement about ethics and morality. Science can’t tell us right from wrong.