A couple of weeks ago I heard an interesting tidbit of news on NPR. Israel is going to do research on stem cells derived from embryos. It seems that some learned rabbis studied the Bible (or Torah) to find out exactly what was written about killing an embryo. The rabbis discovered language that forbids the killing of a person inside another person. That is, it is wrong to kill an embryo that is embedded in the womb of a woman. However, the prohibition does not apply to an embryo in a petri dish.
The news that South Korea is going to perform experiments to extract stem cells from embryos was headline news a few weeks back.
Fortunately, the United States is not going to be left out of the effort to find cures for such conditions as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and many others. Bush won't let the federal government fund the research, but California is setting up its own research laboratories for such work.