significance of scientific achievements and over-inflating the potential

of the cells.

“The public is laboring under the misapprehension that if we made human

embryonic stem cells legal then we could put them into patients next week

and cure them,” says Dr. Constance W. Atwell, a NINDS research director. “That’s just not the case.”

Part of finding a cure to diseases such as Parkinson’s lies in understanding underlying cell mechanisms, according Ronald D. G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at the National Institute of Health.

“The game here is not simply to inject embryonic stem cells into Parkinson’s

patients and cure them,” says McKay. The goal is “getting to know the

cell, its origin, how it lives, and how it dies.”