Another January 20 insult from Obama

"We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost."

President Bush saved our country from the ethical morass of harvesting human embryos for stem cell research. The breakthrough of 2008 might have never come if government money had been used for embryo farming and more demands for embryos. Under Obama, we can be assured of far less respect for human life and fewer ethical concerns at the beginning and at the end, especially with his promise of FOCA.

Scientific Breakthroughs, December 30, 2008 at America.gov reporting Science, magazine article.

"In a triumph of molecular magic, scientists took skin cells from adults suffering from a range of genetic diseases and transformed them into stem cells that could be used to test potential treatments or replace damaged cells in patients.

In its December 19, 2008 issue, Science magazine, one of the world’s most prominent scientific journals, hailed this and related advances as the breakthrough of the year, first on a list of the top 10 scientific advances of 2008.

“When Science's writers and editors set out to pick this year's biggest advances, we looked for research that answers major questions about how the universe works and that paves the way for future discoveries,” deputy news editor Robert Coontz said in a December 18 statement. “Our top choice, cellular reprogramming, opened a new field of biology almost overnight and holds out hope of life-saving medical advances.”
Before scientists developed methods to reprogram cells, isolating stem cells from people required harvesting them from human embryos, an ethically controversial procedure. Several countries, including the United States, restricted the technique, thereby hampering stem cell research. [This is incorrect--the research was never restricted--only the government funding beyond certain cell lines. Private research was always an option for any company wanting to put up the money and the USA produced far more research and papers on stem cell research even with limited cell lines than any other country.]

Normally, a mature cell maintains its identity for life — skin cells do not transform into brain cells, muscle cells do not become liver cells. In 2006, researchers turned on four genes in cells from a mouse’s tail and found that the cells had been “reprogrammed” into stem cells — immature cells that have the potential to mature into a variety of different cell types.

Cultured in a dish, stem cells can be incubated with chemical cocktails to coax them to mature into different cell types, including those found in the liver, muscle and brain.

This year’s breakthrough in cellular reprogramming allows researchers to generate new stem cell lines from people with genetic diseases."