Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

Do you remember some years back,:when the Bush Administration (?) prohibited the use of fetal stem cells for research?  This was of course because abortions were the source of fetal stem cells.  

The usual suspects insisted that all sorts of really important medical research would leave the U.S. without access to fetal stem cells.  

Then, amazingly enough, fetal stem cells failed repeatedly to do the claimed miracles.   Adult stem cells turned out to be effective for treatment.   

Why?  I suspect that the scientists doing the screeching were really more concerned that women considering an abortion might be more willing to do so if they could imagine that removing this inconvenience would advance medical science.

I am reading Mary Roach's Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy at the moment.  Like all Roach books, it is fascinating popular science and written with a frightening level of wit.  On p. 215 she describes how a Kyoto University scientist figured out how to "regress adult cells to their undifferentiated state.  That is, he induced pluripotency..."

Part of why I tend to be skeptical when someone makes the accusation that someone is anti-science is stunts like the fetal stem cells tempest in a teapot.   (Yes, this is guaranteed to be the first time that metaphor has appeared in a sentence with the phrase "fetal stem cell.")