The Return of Reason

Three cheers for President Obama's lifting of the embryonic stem cell ban! Finally, an administration that is following reason. Here's an example from Time magazine of a promising scientist's lead cut short by the policies of Luddites in the previous administration:

After a storm hammered San Francisco that winter, the university campus lost power; if not for the backup generators that pumped emergency electricity to its labs, countless cell cultures might have been lost. Fisher's embryonic stem cell lab, however, was off the campus grid, housed in a temporary facility built with private funds, which did not have a backup system. It would take several days for power to be restored to that site, during which time Fisher had no other place to bring her cells — she couldn't use the university incubators without jeopardizing the school's access to federal funding. Her cells were no ordinary stem cells, either. They were the first to be cultured on a bed of entirely human cells, an important advance in bringing usable stem-cell therapies to patients. With no other option, Fisher watched her cells die.