[Opinion] Red science vs. blue science

BOSTON - By now you may be forgiven for suspecting that science is tinted - if not entirely tainted - by politics. The arguments over evolution and global warming alone are enough to make anyone believe that we have red and blue science as well as red and blue states.

But nothing has been quite as polarizing over the past six years as the controversy over embryonic stem cells. Stem cells have been a defining issue even among politicians who can't define them.

So it is no surprise to see a genuine, bona fide scientific breakthrough put through the political spin cycle. Last week, a trio of competing labs from Japan to Massachusetts rolled back the biological clock in mice and turned ordinary skin cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells. The research raised the possibility that we might eventually be able to make stem cells without destroying human embryos.

This announcement came on the eve of a House vote to allow federally funded scientists to study cells from leftover frozen embryos at fertility clinics. And this disharmonic convergence...