Stem Cells

By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial board

All the legal quibbling over language means there will be no proposed constitutional amendment concerning stem cell research on Missouri's November ballot.

Scientist James Thomson may be a hero to President Bush, but the admiration doesn't look to be mutual.

Thomson, a University of Wisconsin anatomy professor, played a key role in the recent discovery that skin cells doctored with four genes could achieve the versatile healing quality previously found in embryonic stem cells.

Bush and others pounced on the news, declaring that the discovery rendered obsolete the need to obtain stem cells from human embryos.

Thomson himself disputed that notion in a commentary he co-authored for The Washington Post with Alan I. Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Should government restrict medical research that has the approval of the mainstream scientific establishment?