STANFORD — The iridescent ball sits motionless under the microscope, a bundle of tight-packed cells lying on a bed of gray, spindly fibers.
The ball contracts tightly. It releases. Then it contracts and releases again, all in the span of several seconds.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Monday October 18, 2004 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 68 words Type of Material: Correction
Stem-cell debate -- The word "embryo" was omitted from a sentence in an article in Sunday's Section A about California's Proposition 71, which would commit state money to research using stem cells. The sentence should have read: "The pulsating mass is filled with bona fide heart cells, created from cells of an embryo in a dish of orange-pink Kool-Aid-colored broth in an incubator at a Stanford University laboratory."
The pulsating mass is filled with bone fide heart cells, created from cells of an in a dish of orange-pink Kool-Aid-colored broth in an incubator at a Stanford University laboratory.They came from stem cells and, if chance had treated them differently, they could have become skin cells, lung cells, pieces of brain or spleen -- any body tissue at all.
Embryonic stem cells -- the promise they hold and the ethical dilemmas they raise -- have become a high-profile topic in this campaign year, nowhere more than in California.
In a little more than two weeks, Californians will vote on Proposition 71, which would commit $3 billion in state money over the next 10 years to research using stem cells, most of them extracted from 5-day-old 150-celled human embryos.
Such research divides Americans in part because of an inescapable ethical issue: In time, the research may cure terrible maladies, but to get to that point, scientists must destroy human embryos.
President Bush, who has sharply limited the use of federal money to finance stem cell research, voiced one side of that argument during his second debate with his Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry: "Embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of life."
Kerry, in return, stated the opposing view: "I think it is respecting life to reach for that cure."
Beyond that moral debate lies a pragmatic one. Is research into embryonic stem cells promising enough to justify $3 billion in taxpayer money? Just how advanced is the research? What are the risks? Can cures be found without using embryo cells?
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Potential Effects
A taste of the potential can be seen at Hans Keirstead's laboratory at UC Irvine's Reeve-Irvine Research Center.
One day last month, Keirstead, an assistant professor of anatomy and neurobiology, showed a visiting reporter a movie.
On the screen, a rat with a splotch on its back staggered, its hind legs and tail dragging pathetically on the ground.
Then a second rat appeared on the screen, and this one looked a whole lot better: It was supporting its weight on its back legs, its tail smartly up and its hind feet alternating -- albeit clumsily -- left with right.
