What are researchers doing with human stem cells?
More fights pitting jobs against values are expected to spread. Biotech, while small, looms as a big source of growth. Started 30 years ago, the U.S. industry has just 200,000 workers at 1,500 mostly money-losing companies. But advances in stem cell research since 1998 spur hopes biotech is closer to cures for cancer, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injuries and other maladies. That could transform the sector into a profit dynamo, a big reason biotech executives and financiers push stem cell research so hard. Opponents push back just as hard, equating stem cell research with abortion and injecting moral values into what would otherwise be a business debate. In the past five years, most states have put biotech near the top of economic-development lists. That means governors and lawmakers ideologically opposed to embryonic stem cell research face a dilemma: They can support research to boost biotech — and risk alienating voters — or oppose it and risk losing biotech jobs and investors.
