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For anyone who was trying to follow me as I tried to sort through the Christopher Reeve statements and the reports and meanings thereof, here's the latest poop: I e-mailed the Christopher Reeve Foundation as I said I would. The reply I got, from a Susan Howley, is: "In general, scientists agree that stem cell research must be pursued on all fronts because among many other things, it is not known whether differentiated "adult" stem cells will be as effective therapeutically as undifferentiated stem cells. In the case of the study you cite, while it is true that the marrow stem cells apparently were converted to neurons, the project did not examine behavioral outcomes in animal models of injury. The study will have to be replicated independently in other laboratories and taken to the next level of investigation. In general, the only thing safe to say is that an extraordinary amount of work remains to be done before we understand the capacity of all stem cells to be used to treat and cure disease. "Until the results of scientific studies are published in peer reviewed scientific journals, they are not in the public domain. While the subject study may have been submitted on March 31st, it was only published in the August 15, 2000 issue of Journal of Neuroscience Research." As I indicated, the web site where Bill got his information is run by pro-life opponents of embryonic stem cell research who are trying to argue that research shows that this line of research is not needed, and that adult stem cells can do the job. Besides being aware of where information comes from, it is important to pay attention to different senses of the little word "can", which range along a spectrum from what is theoretically possible to what is now practically doable, and to beware of distortions in which one sense of "can" is equated to another. In theory, since every cell in the same person contains the same genes, any cell type can be converted to any other cell type. But nobody can practically do all this now. Until someone actually converts marrow cells to dopamine-producing neurons and transplants them into a Parkinson's patient's substantia nigra, and they grow there and produce dopamine and permanently reverse PD symptoms with no significant undesirable effects, it will be too early to abandon embryonic stem cell research. The capabilities of embryonic stem cells are not just theoretical. In fact they do eventually differentiate into dopamine producing cells, as occurs in normal human development. Well, I'm turning in my shovel now. Anyone with further questions can contact the Christophe Reeve Foundation. Phil Tompkins