For the past decade, stem-cells have been a hot-button political issue in religiously conservative countries like the USA. While they have enormous medical potential to end suffering and cure intractable diseases, the usual method of sourcing them was from human embryos - either aborted fetuses, or from blastocysts created by artificial insemination and grown in vitro specifically for the purpose. Neither was acceptable to US religious fanatics, and so research was restricted there for many years.
Now, scientists have found a better way:
In a breakthrough that could have huge implications, British and Canadian scientists have found a way of reprogramming skin cells taken from adults, effectively winding the clock back on the cells until they were in an embryonic form.And with that, any hint of an ethical dilemma disappears. Oh, we still have to worry about what we do with them, just as we do with everything else - but where they come from is now a dead issue.[...]
Because the cells can be made from a patient's own skin, they carry the same DNA and so could be used without a risk of being rejected by the immune system.