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Saturday, March 03, 2007 No One Said it Would be Easy In the event you missed this February 28 NYT story, it's worth reading, especially the conclusion ... This is the second time that a major stem cell paper has come under criticism, the previous episode involving the collapse last year of Hwang Woo-suk's claims to have generated embryonic stem cell lines from adults. Although Dr. Hwang's case involved fraud and belongs in a different category, the problems with the two papers underline the difficulty of working with stem cells and the immaturity of the field, despite the large sums of money being invested in it. Two thoughts. First, the next time opponents of embryonic stem-cell research argue that this work should not continue because it has not yet produced results, remind them that we're not dealing with a child's jigsaw puzzle. Progress with the fundamental and inherently complex building blocks of life takes time. Second, maybe "the difficulty of working with stem cells" would be lessened if we could find a way to un-politicize the issue and let scientists do their jobs without fear of theocratic retribution. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn