by Lawrence S.B. Goldstein

About the author: Lawrence S.B. Goldstein is an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a professor in the division of cellular and molecular medicine and the department of pharmacology at the University of California in San Diego.

Why should we use federal funds for human pluripotent stem cell research? Ask [former pro football player] Walter Payton and 12,000 other Americans who are waiting for liver transplants. If they are fortunate, new livers will be found and they may live; if not, they will die. [Editor’s note: Walter Payton died of liver cancer on November 1, 1999.]

Ask my friend Doug, who has a 7-year-old son with diabetes. Every night he and his wife are awake in the wee hours, monitoring their son’s blood, worrying that they have missed the...