A Stem Cell Breakthrough You Won't Hear About

...because it doesn't involve embryonic stem cells.

Scientists at Australia's Griffith University have engineered a breakthrough in the field of adult stem cell research that's so significant, say experts, that it could render the debate over embryonic stem cell research moot.

The results of the four-year research project showed that olfactory stem cells can be turned into heart cells, brain cells, nerve cells – indeed, almost any kind of cell in the body – without the problems of rejection or tumors forming, a common side effect with embryonic stem cells.

I'd call that noteworthy, wouldn't you? Stem cells that can do everything the embryonic variety is sold as being capable of, minus all the deleterious side effects. Miracle cures without the hideous, Mengelesque moral blowback.

But it gets better - wait until you see what the price tag was:

The poorly funded Griffith University team – which conducted its research with a mere $200,000 in grants – appears to have found a direct and non-controversial alternative to the use of stem cells derived from leftover embryos created during fertility treatment, reported the Australian newspaper.

But of course, the social Left will hear nothing of a stem cell technique that doesn't provide moral cover for their twin fetishes of child-sacrifice and wasting gobs and gobs of taxpayer dollars:

The breakthrough, first announced two months ago, has been largely ignored by the U.S. media, which has focused on embryonic stem cell research as the only option to cure debilitating ailments like Hodgkin's, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.

As a result of the lopsided press coverage, California voters passed a $6 billion referendum to fund embryonic stem cell research last November, with similar programs proposed around the U.S. - though embryonic stem cell research has yet to show any significant medical progress.

Australia's Catholic Archbishop George Pell is needlessly generous in attempting to explain this anti-life myopia:

"One of the complicating factors is that a lot of people have a lot of money tied up in embryonic stem cells."

Yeah - a lot of other people's money. But that's just the means; the end is the relentless cultivation of the same left-wing moral supremacism, the same insufferable pseudoscientific hauteur, in defense of the escalatingly abhorrent jettisoning of any and all ethical perspective on the notion that life is not ours to do with as we will, but is a gift, and possession, of God.

If the goal of the stem cell research debate is truly pragmatic and utilitarian - i.e. to determine what will actually work - the Aussies would seem to have settled that question in the best of all possible worlds. If the goal is to further a disgustingly nihilistic ideology that is now even further removed from reality than it was before, than the Griffith University researchers have, as it were, "created a monster" - one that the liberal Mengeles and their Extreme Media mouthpieces will spare no effort to squelch at all costs.

The Bush Administration needs to get this message out by any means necessary. Say, via a PSA campaign with the message, "Pick your nose, save your life."

The evil scientists wouldn't know what hit them.