It’s been a busy couple of weeks for the stem-cell field. First, Nature’s paper on the production of primate embryonic stem cells by somatic cell nuclear transfer. Today, the papers in Cell and Science showing that transducing human fibroblasts with four transcription factors can lead to the production of pluripotent stem cells, a feat previously achieved using mouse fibroblasts.

In the midst of all the excitement elicited by these papers, which are getting substantial global attention, I got a press release from the “”https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/index.php">Center for Genetics and Society" (CGS) that, in relation to the generation of human pluripotent cells, quoted their policy analyst Jesse Reynolds as saying:

“If these results are as promising as they appear to be, they significantly undermine the case for cloning-based stem cell research”.

Let me get this straight. Does this mean that, just because it was possible to generate human pluripotent cells after transduction of somatic cells with, not one, but four different genes, we should ponder the possibility of not pursuing cloning-based stem cell research? Well, I don’t know about that. Have we not learned any lessons from the unfortunate deaths of some participants in gene therapy trials and the fact that transduced genes have a way of inserting themselves in undesirable places?

Elsewhere on their website, in a statement the CGS issued after the production of monkey stem cells, the Center’s Associate Executive Director Marcy Darnovsky makes the following comment on the prospects of personalized treatments derived from stem cells:

“The personal-repair-kit approach to stem cell research is far-fetched. To the extent that researchers and their advocates still claim that cloning techniques will lead to personalized stem cell treatments, they should recognize that – even if these are someday technically possible – they would be enormously expensive, and thus would likely worsen our already shameful health disparities”.

Surely this argument would apply to pretty much any scientific and technological advance, wouldn’t it? Would everyone be able to afford a prosthetic leg or a full treatment schedule with an anti-tumor antibody?

I find it paradoxical that the publication of the advances I mentioned above should be accompanied by calls for less, instead of more, work on embryonic stem cells. To point to social inequalities as an argument against stem cell-based regenerative therapies is as mistaken as thinking that the transduction approach could replace research on embryonic stem cells. You can see a glass as half empty or half full, but you cannot say that, as it is only half full, we might as well empty it.