The following editorial appeared Friday in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

How hard scientists have sought to honor the sensibilities of those – including the federal government – who oppose federally funded stem-cell research on grounds that it destroys human embryos. Now, scientists apparently have come up with a way to get the stem cells they need without harming a single blastocyst.

The reaction: pretty universal thumbs-down from the traditional naysayers, including President Bush. When is the American public, which overwhelmingly supports this research, going to rise up and take the issue away from the religiously inspired minority that is repressing it?

In another context, this debate would be comical, as if American society had become obsessively focused on the number of angels that (who?) can stand on the head of a pin or perhaps on who killed JonBenet Ramsey. But it’s not funny; the prohibition on using federal funds for research that involves the destruction of an embryo of 16 cells – never mind that it will be destroyed in any event – is retarding research in very promising therapies for several fatal diseases.

Think about it: Doctors in fertility clinics can harvest women’s eggs, mix them with men’s sperm in a dish and transfer some of the resulting days-old embryos to a woman’s womb. Then those same doctors can throw out, destroy, flush, incinerate any leftover embryos. But federal law prohibits one extra step: While the surplus embryos are on their way to destruction, they cannot be detoured through a research lab where their stem cells would be harvested and kept alive instead of being destroyed. That would be destroying an embryo for research.

So scientists at a firm in Massachusetts found a way to take a single stem cell from a younger four-cell embryo without harming it. Turns out it’s a procedure frequently used with in-vitro fertilization to test for embryonic malformations. Several thousand youngsters in the United States are living examples that it poses no dangers.

Some legitimate scientific hesitations have been expressed about this approach, and it clearly needs extended testing and evaluation. But those, such as President Bush, who offered immediate criticism have made clear they never will approve of any research that involves an embryo in any way. Oh, and meanwhile, thousands of those excess embryos still are being destroyed every year, stem cells and all. Perhaps Kafka wrote this script.