Between Two Worlds

Yuval Levin--author most recently of Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy--shows four basic myths that the public and the media believe about embryonic stem cell research and policy:

1. Obama has restored federal policy to what it was prior to Bush’s 2001 stem cell policy announcement.
   
2. The Bush policy was a ban on embryonic stem cell research.
3. There are no viable scientific alternatives to the destruction of human embryos.
4. The promise of pluripotent stem cells is quite certain.

Read the whole thing.

See also:

• The President Politicizes Stem-Cell Research, by Robert P. George and Eric Cohen
• Obama's False Choice, by Yuval Levin
• Science Over All? by Yuval Levin
• Winning Smugly, William Saletan (pro-choice journalist)
  
• Obama Also Rescinds Executive Order for Alternatives to ESCR, By Wesley J. Smith
• Perpetuating a Needless Stem-Cell War, by Ryan T. Anderson
• Stem Cells: A Political History, by Joseph Bottum and Ryan T. Anderson