Two weeks after scientists announced that they could turn skin cells into stem cells without using human embryos, the debate over the implications heats up. Scientists and pundits take sides on the breakthrough’s scientific and ethical implications.

In the Washington Post, Alan I. Leshner and James A. Thomson (one of two scientists who developed the technique), cautioned against a quick rejection of embryonic stem cell research. They also said that conservatives can’t interpret the breakthrough as a vindication of George Bush’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, noting that the breakthrough “depended entirely on previous embryonic stem cell research.”

Wesley J. Smith, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, said Bush’s policy is just one reason scientists explored less controversial research. Ethics – not just politics or funding – played a role, and Smith said the Bush policy helped by focusing on “the moral importance of the embryo.” Thomson, one of the first scientists to isolate embryonic stem cells, has admitted his own ethical reservations about his research: “If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough. … I thought long and hard about whether I would do it.”

Smith said he believes the new technique will affect human cloning more than embryonic stem cell research, since it has given scientists something they believed possible only through cloning: “Tailor-made, patient-specific, pluripotent stem cells.” He predicts that President Bush’s stem cell research policy will stand through the rest of his term, and embryonic stem cell research will play a lesser part in the 2008 election. A California stem cell agency that spent millions on embryonic stem cell research is now funding research that does not harm human embryos.

But what do the world’s first cloners and stem cell researchers have to say? Ian Wilmut, the world’s first cloner, has rejected cloning research for Thomson’s new technique. And Thomson said the stem cell wars he helped begin will eventually end: “A decade from now, this will be just a funny historical footnote.”

Doesn’t it make you mad when you think you have to do something slightly immoral to obtain some desirable end, and then it turns out, five minutes after the dirty deed, that you would not have had to do it after all — and could have kept a clean conscience to boot — if you had only waited and trusted?

Don’t you think Isaac’s wife Rebekah felt that way after the deceit she perpetrate to secure the birthright for her favorite son? Jacob was a shoo-in for the blessing anyway, and look at the mess his mom caused by her underhandedness, now having to rush her darling off the plantation for protection, never to lay eyes on him again.

Don’t you feel bad for King Saul, so touching close to glory, but forfeiting the whole thing because he wouldn’t trust just a little longer in God’s word that Samuel would show up on time? His logic in 1 Samuel 13:11,12 is so persuasive and heart-rending, you know you could have made the same fatal choice.

Or Nikabrik in Prince Caspian. Don’t you wish he had just trusted in the solution on the side of the angels — as Caspian, Doctor Cornelius, and Trufflehunter did — rather than enlisting the Hag and Wer-Wolf to win the battle?

Wouldn’t you be mad at yourself if you’d been in the chorus shouting that we absolutely positively need to destroy human embryos in order to help people with Parkinson’s disease? I wonder if you would have trusted just a little bit longer in that childlike gut certainty of the sanctity of human life if you had known that on November 20^th researchers would announce a breakthrough: human stem cells can now be made from skin cells.

Up until Election Day, New Jersey Democrats thought they had a stem cell ballot initiative in the bag. Polls showed voters supported the measure, which would have netted $450 million to help turn the state into a biomedical research mecca. But when the votes were tallied, the  measure tanked — handily, in fact — 53 to 47 percent.

Now New Jersey Democrats are puzzling over the loss. Gov. Jon Corzine says voters’ message was that government needs to fix the state’s ailing finances before borrowing any more money. But others noted that voters did approve a $200 million measure that will preserve open space.

Explanation: Well, that’s just because New Jersey has always been environmentally aware.

Here’s the story on the state’s stem cell flip-flop. What’s really going on there?