AP reports that scientists at Wake Forest University and Harvard University have found stem cells in amniotic fluid similar to embryonic stem cells and are able to turn the cells into brain, liver, and bone cells.

This seems to be good news. Would we have gotten to this point if we had found the harvesting of embryonic stem cells acceptable?

Harvard doctors still want to pursue the least ethical method for obtaining stem cells:

Dr. George Daley, a Harvard University stem cell researcher, said that finding raises the possibility that someday expectant parents can freeze amnio stem cells for future tissue replacement in a sick child without fear of immune rejection.

Nonetheless, Daley said the discovery shouldn’t be used as a replacement for human embryonic stem cell research.

“While they are fascinating subjects of study in their own right, they are not a substitute for human embryonic stem cells, which allow scientists to address a host of other interesting questions in early human development,” said Daley, who began work last year to clone human embryos to produce stem cells.