President Obama has made it clear he is ready to overturn the Bush ban of federal money for research involving human embryo stem cells. As he prepares his Executive Order, one can only hope that he notices a recent story from Israel.

Doctors there have been treating a boy who was injected with embryo stem cells when he was just 10 years old, and again at 12. The news report suggests that the injections were performed in Russia as his parents sought a miracle cure for a condition called ataxia telangiectasia.

Unfortunately for the boy, in the years since, he has developed massive tumors in his brain stem and spinal cord.

Scientists in Israel have conducted extensive tests to determine the cause of the tumors, and have concluded that the embryo stem cells are to blame.

Their research is about to published in PLoS Medicine – a magazine produced by the Public Library of Science.

As President Obama forces American taxpayers to become silent investors in companies engaging in such immoral therapies, one wonders if we shall also become liable for the monstrous consequences of experiments gone awry.

Labels: stem cell research