Death of a Wedge Issue

This is terrific news to celebrate this Thanksgiving! We have the means to explore promising fields of medical research without wantonly destroying human life. The Faustian Bargain of the embryonic stem-cell debate -- destroy life so that life may be saved -- has been made obsolete!

Researchers in Japan and Wisconsin have discovered a way to make human skin cells act like embryonic stem cells, thus opening the door to potential therapeutic applications, without compromising basic scientific ethics, or requiring thousands of "donor" women to surrender their eggs. This is why Ian Wilmut, creator of Dolly the cloned sheep and pioneer of the technology that made embryonic stem-cell research possible, says he is going to quit the practice. It's time has passed, he reasons.

Whether you choose to thank science or thank God, thank something! A needless debate can be scrapped. Potentially life-saving research can be ethically pursued. And we no longer need be tempted to compromise our humanity for the benefit of humankind,

Everyone should celebrate this development. And everyone will, I suspect, expect for some unscrupulous politicos.

You see, with this discovery comes the end of the "need" for embryonic stem-cell research -- a dubious "need" in the the first place, given the paucity of results such research has produced. As even that bastion of right-wing Christian fundamentalism, The New York Times, concedes, "For all the hopes invested in it over the last decade, embryonic stem cell research has moved slowly, with no cures or major therapeutic discoveries in sight." The value of embryonic research was never so much medical, but political.

Indeed, embryonic stem cells were the classic "wedge" issue -- a way for Democrats to separate the GOP from pro-lifers by making it choose between a popular position or one that pleased its base. And it allowed for such effective political theater -- just trot out Ron Reagan, or Michael J. Fox, or promise, as John Edwards once did, that the Democratic Party could make Christopher Reeve walk again. That the supposed benefits of embryonic stem-cell research were ridiculously over-hyped, or that there was plenty of reason to believe the same potential could be achieved through more ethical means, didn't matter. As an issue, this one was campaign gold.

But now it's been made moot, and it will be interesting to see if embryonic stem-cell research's supporters will yield to the science, or cling to their myths for nakedly political reasons.

It will also be interesting to see what we here in California do, now that we have a multi-billion dollar state-backed research outfit charged specifically with funding embryonic stem-cell research. Will some honorable politician have the decency to try to amend Proposition 71? Will the celebrities and biotech interests who fought and spent heavily for its passage now seek to reform it? Or were their interests never so much about progress as politics?

We'll see. One way or the other, this discovery marks a giant leap for humanity. And for that, we can all be grateful.