There is that...

While the Isreal-Lebanon conflict is obviously generating the lion's share of the news headlines here (along with the collapse of one of the ceiling panels on one of the "Big Dig" tunnels, a $15 billion project to bury all the expressways in downtown Boston, which killed one woman), Bush's decision to veto legislation giving federal money to embryonic stem cell research has also generated a lot of buzz.  This is particularly true in my scientific circle, since the lab I just joined is one of the relatively few labs in the U.S. which conducts this kind of research (although I will not be a part of it, by choice).  Only Massachusetts, Michigan, and California provide state funding for embryonic stem cell research - anywhere else, it's not illegal but nobody will give you money to do it, which practically shuts the research down.

This is one issue I have very mixed feelings about.  There are very valid scientific reasons why embryonic stem cells offer vast potential to fix a lot of problems.  One of the big pushes in bioengineering now is the growth of replacement organs - that is, instead of doing temporary patches while waiting for a human donor organ, the goal is to actively grow the different tissues comprising the heart by giving a stem cell (the ultimate "parent cell" type of all the cells in our body) the correct stimuli to "decide" which tissues to make and how to put them together.  This is essentially what happens during the development of a baby and is not nearly as science fiction as it sounds.  Indeed, right now (and using fairly unsophisticated techniques), we can grow simple organs (like the ear) fairly successfully in mice.  While embryos aren't the only source of stem cells, they are by far the least differentiated and thus the easiest to manipulate.  That means that while a mesenchymal stem cell (the next best kind of stem cell, from bone marrow) might be signalled to produce some of the different tissues in the bone or many blood cells, it wouldn't be able to produce lung tissue.  Embryonic stem cells are further back in deciding what they want to be "when they grow up", so they are easier to influence (kind of like McDonalds advertising Happy Meals to 3-year-olds).  So, as a scientist, I understand why people want to do this work - it makes sense and it may well work in quite amazing new ways.  The argument that the embryos the scientists want are simply slated for destruction anyway (if the parents don't want/need the embryos) is also somewhat compelling.  Why destroy something that may be used to impart very significant improvements in human health?  

However, here's where I think this whole debate is totally missing the boat.  Somehow, without any significant public debate, we have allowed 400,000 embryos (which have already been developed for up to six days prior to being frozen so that the in vitro fertilization doctors can select the "best" of the fertilized eggs to implant to maximize the chance for a successful pregnancy) to be put into storage.  If these embryos are deemed to be "unneeded" for pregnancy (a likely result if the couple chooses not to have additional children), all of these embryos are effectively marked for disposal , at least in the long term.  So, in a sense, the stem cell debate isn't about whether or not to kill embryos; it's more about how and when to kill them.  Or, put in another way, this embryo debate has effectively already been settled while nobody was paying attention.  While I would still personally refuse to do embryonic stem cell research since I believe that embryos are "humans" (that is, they contain everything required to form a human being), stem cell research may in fact be the best of two bad solutions to the embryo stockpile.