It IS a step in the right direction.

But it does not address one of the truly basic elements of the Left's demand on using embryos, which is that refusal to use them conveys humanity upon them, thereby going against one of the Left's most cherished tenets---that embryos and fetuses are not really human beings at all, but merely clumps of cells.

Their whining about research never made sense, as no embyronic stem cells had ever proven effective or even helpful, while adult and umbilical cord stem cells were the ones showing promise and actually working in some cases.

The real underlying issue was always their fear of the slippery slope that would be created by banning embryonic stem cell research on the basis of the ethical concerns of destroying human life for research purposes. Defining embryos as "human" was a very frightening step to this lobby. This is the same reason the Left has fought legislation to make the killing of a fetus in an attack a crime. No matter how badly a woman cherished her unborn child, no matter how heinous a crime to have that child killed in an attack on the mother, the Left fought to keep that from being considered a homicide because they were so terrified of the downstream effects of such a declaration. They are totally invested in their claims that unborn children are fair game at any stage of development, prior to taking an actual breath, that they will fight any effort to convey official human status on an of them for any reason.

So I anticipate this research advance will be pretty much ignored by the pro-abortion Left and expect them to continue trying to convince people that embryonic stem cell research is the best chance for finding cures, linked to their claims that it really only involved killing off clumps of cells.

Huh... everyone seems to be quiet on this one. Weird.

This will be interesting to see how this pans out. For pure science this is a good thing. I'm not sure how well it'll help practical medicine.

Almiranta,

Embryonic stem cell research is not banned in this country and there is no serious consideration of banning it either.