Don’t Count on Ethical Stem Cell Breakthrough to End Culture War Over Nascent Life

Over at The Corner , Daniel Foster wonders whether a tremendous recent breakthrough in creating pluripotent stem cells from normal body cells, could end the culture war battle over biotechnology. Alas, not a chance.

As I pointed out in a longer analysis of this story over at Secondhand Smoke : Even if this advance did EVERYTHING that scientists wanted from ESCR, it won’t stop many from wanting to experiment on nascent human life. Indeed, some would look at the advance, shrug, and keep on trying to clone human embryos.

It is important to understand that stem cell advances are not the end game. As I wrote in NRO last week , embryonic stem cell research is  merely the opening stanza of a much longer symphony that ultimately seeks to open the door to Brave New World technologies such as genetic engineering and human enhancement, all of which require cloning and/or experimenting on embryos to perfect.

So, will this end the war? Nope. Will it help those of us who want to convince Main Street of the need to enact responsible regulations to prevent Brave New World?  You betcha.