The Triumph of Hope Over Science

After I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease two years ago, at the relatively young age of 52, I read everything I could about the condition's usual "progression" — an odd word for degeneration. The worst-case prognosis is grim: a long slide into physical and mental incapacity.

That is not going to happen to me, I said, as I began measuring my physical decline. I am young enough that I may be able to benefit from advances in medicine, especially in brain research. Maybe with new medications I would be able to put off taking L-dopa, the best drug for Parkinson's but one that loses its effectiveness over time. Surely better treatments will become available, I told myself.

So why didn't I welcome the news that researchers in South Korea were able to clone a human embryo and extract viable stem cells from it? After all, one of the researchers said their goal was "not to clone humans, but to understand the causes of diseases" — and one of the diseases named most often was Parkinson's. Scientists say they may one...