The Stem Cell Debate Is Over? Not Quite.

James A. Thomson, the University of Wisconsin scientist who published a paper on induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells teamed up with Alan I. Leshner, executive director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in a Washington Post op ed yesterday to rebut a column by Charles Krauthammer. Krauthammer, who served on the President’s Council on Bioethics, wrote that President Bush’s opposition to expanding federal support of embryonic stem cell research “helped lead him [Thomson] and others to find some ethically neutral way to produce stem cells.”

But the Leshner-Thomson response is stinging:

Far from vindicating the current U.S. policy of withholding federal funds from many of those working to develop potentially lifesaving embryonic stem cells, recent papers in the journals Science and Cell described a breakthrough achieved despite political restrictions. In fact, work by both the U.S. and Japanese teams that reprogrammed skin cells depended entirely on previous embryonic stem cell research.

And then there is the peculiar notion, also implicit in Krauthammer’s piece, that Yamanaka’s team in Kyoto worked on reprogramming skin cells because of George W. Bush’s U.S. policy. That must have been news to the Japanese.

Krauthammer and others have tried to use the science to make a case for political vindication. Supporters of the president’s policy would do better to follow Yuval Levin’s serious and sober advice not to treat this as a “vindication” of one side or another, but as extraordinary science.

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