It’s obvious from yesterday’s vote that embryonic stem cells will continue to split the country (California versus Washington DC, for one thing). But in an ironic bit of timing researchers at the Reproductive Genetics Institute have just published some results at Reproductive BioMedicine Online that could–possibly–short-circuit some of the arguments against using embryonic stem cells.

The RGI researchers have figured out how to derive stem cells from a four-day old embryo–a stage known as a morula. Until now, scientists have been using older blastocysts, and have been destroying them in the process. But when the RGI team took a single cell from a morula, it still had the capacity to develop into a normal embryo. That means that