NYTimes article on the Harvard embryonic-stem cell research lab, and the care they take to ensure their private funding status doesn’t get mixed up with federal funds. And this:

Q. Last month, after the Korean stem cell cloning scandal broke, a Roman Catholic scientist-theologian, the Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, told The Boston Globe that too many researchers in this renegade branch of science had been playing down the grave ethical concerns for much too long. What is your response?

A. My first response is, There’s nothing unethical about what we’re doing here. We think embryonic stem cells can be made to become pancreatic beta cells and that they will be able to help diabetics produce their own insulin. I’ve never once doubted the morality of this work.

This is all about differing religious beliefs. I don’t believe I have the right to tell others when life begins. Science doesn’t have the answer to that question; it’s metaphysical.

Now it’s true, we use fertilized human eggs to derive embryonic stem cells. And those fertilized eggs have the potential, under certain circumstances, to become a living person. There are many who believe that there’s a moral imperative to use that potential to try to help living sick people.

I hold with them

Ends, means, etc. Bah.