Gore, Righties Bond Over Non-Embryonic Stem Cells

Some conservatives see recent investments by Al Gore’s venture-capital group into stem-cell research involving a non-embryonic variety as a tacit denial of that more invasive method, the New Scientist reports. Gore’s company has put $20 million into a project researching treatment with induced pluripotent stem cells, which do not require an embryo to produce. But scientists see no message in the investment.

“Here and now, one can” study stem cells without destroying an embryo, one blogger wrote. “It just makes sense. Gore apparently thinks so too, and he's not an idiot, right?” But pluripotent cells are just another path, not a replacement for embryonic, researchers say, and neither has been proven. The money from Gore “is a financial investment in science, and should not be interpreted as an ethical investment,” one researcher said. (More Al Gore stories.)