Stem Cell Breakthrough

Following up on Saturday's Dolly story, here is another encouraging piece of news: Two separate teams of scientists in the US have apparently found a way to reprogram adult stem cells in a way that makes them pluripotent, meaning that they can turn into any kind of body cell. This was a characteristic that has so far been specific to embryonic stem cells, which was the main argument for ongoing research in that area, despite the moral issues. They have run successful tests with human cells, not animal cells - if this really works, all the arguments for ES research might be going down the drain as we speak.