Another day, another stem cell story, or so it seems. “Brain cells of corpses are grown in test tube”, announces The Independent (UK, 3 May 2001), responding to the news that Fred Gage's research team at the Salk Institute have shown that neural progenitor cells can be propagated from adult human cadaver brains (Nature, 3 May 2001).

Their finding is important because it might provide an alternative to the controversial practice of deriving stem cells from embryonic tissue. However, as Peter Andrews, a stem- cell researcher from the University of Sheffield, points out, “the use of cadavers as a potential source of stem cells raises a different set of ethical issues to those associated with using stem cells from embryos” (BBC News Online, 2 May 2001), and Gage's team admit that “complex ethical and societal issues” (Nature, 3 May 2001) need to be addressed.

Some reports also raise concerns that, with all the hype surrounding stem-cell research, we might be losing sight of the science. Writing for BBC News Online (2 May 2001), Helen Briggs suggests that “research has been overshadowed by ethical objections about the source of the tissue”. Peter Gorner in the Chicago Tribune (3 May 2001) says that “[Gage] is worried that the public has become so inundated by stories about embryonic stem cells ... that the science that underlies the ethical debate often gets short shrift”. In the same article, Gage is quoted as saying “We haven't proved that these are stem cells. They're what are known as progenitor cells... stem cells also have the ability to reproduce themselves and keep on dividing indefinitely, and we haven't yet shown that these cells will do that”.