While we in Medical Genetics and other fields are thrilled about pluripotent stem cells being useful in reinsertion of modified cells to cure impacts such as bone marrow and other such cell- and organ-killing disease, the reality is that for the basic underlying scientific research we really need raw stem cells.

The yield of pluripotent stem cells is very very low - we almost have to take a pound of flesh to get a small teeny vial of useable reset stem cells, and even more die when we modify them.

But raw stem cells have a very high yield factor and are easier to perpetuate in stem cell lines for the basic research in sufficient quantities to be able to use high-powered statistical analysis on to discover things.

I think what most people don't understand (or at least I don't) is that embryonic stem cell research is not therapeutic in aim. As Will says, it's about basic research. In the end, the hope of stem cells is that you would be able to grow your own autografts; make a new heart from your own cells and there are no immunological complications. If you grow a heart from embryonic stem cells, it's not better than a donor heart.

This of course bears the criticism that as much as we might learn from embryonic stem cells, there's no guarantee that information will transfer simply into methods involving adult stem cells--in the same way efforts to turn adult cells back into quasi-pleuripotent cells have been criticised for the improbability that these will properly model embryonic stem cells.

In some ways, funding adult stem cells and limiting embryonic stem cells is in line with the criticism of the Bush administration that they fund applications-oriented research far more than basic research (which many say was in part to blame for the near funding-failing of the Fermi lab).

Some today, some tomorrow, and some in the distant future.

And making us a third world nation from a scientific viewpoint ...