On moral imagination and fear.(human embryo research, ethical aspects)

"Stem-cell research is typically done by using frozen embryos left over from in vitro fertilization. If these embryos were placed in the womb, they might eventually implant, become a fetus, then a child. Unused, they are the earliest undifferentiated collection of cells made by the joining of the egg and sperm, no larger than the period at the end of this sentence."

Anna Quindlen, "A New Look, An Old Battle." April 9 Newsweek

Whatever else we can say about the ethically benighted effort to cull stem cells from human embryos, we know that proponents are absolutely captivated by their alleged "potential." What supposedly can be done resembles alchemy, only better.

Turn lead into gold? Child's play. Soak these cells extracted from "surplus" embryos left over at fertility clinics in the right biochemical elixir, and presto, chango, scientists can supposedly transform them into a slew of tissue types which can be used to remedy, or even cure, any number of devastating neurological diseases. That a tiny human being is killed in the process pales in comparison, we're told, to all the "good" that can be done.

However, the reigning orthodoxy - - that the best, if not sole, source for these gifted and talented cells are human embryos and fetuses - - has come under all-out siege. In the past couple of years further investigation has discovered that the adult body is replete with stem cells, including (I kid you not) from human fat! There are lots of other sources, including cells teased out of placentas.

Not that this will ever dissuade the true believers. Take Anna Quindlen's April 9 Newsweek column. In "A New Look, An Old Battle," Quindlen is practically giddy that inflationary claims about the remedial powers of fetal stem cells will stimulate "a certain long-overdue relativism to discussions of abortion across the land."

Her column is best understood as the latest chapter in the search for the [un]holy grail that began in the early 1980s. Researchers persuaded themselves that a sister atrocity - - harvesting tissue from the brains of unborn babies - - would provide a staggering source of curative powers so overwhelming that it would stop just this side of providing eternal life.