★Awarded a star by Kirkus Reviews for "remarkable merit"
"Proponents see in stem cells the promise of dramatically improving our ability to treat, if not cure, a whole host of debilitating and deadly diseases, including heart disease and stroke, which kill over 17 million people a year worldwide; diabetes, from which nearly 200 million suffer worldwide; and Alzheimer's, which affects roughly 5 million Americans, could well triple in the decades ahead and threatens to bankrupt our health care system. Among other diseases stem cells could radically affect are Parkinson's, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease); multiple sclerosis, arthritis, and spinal cord injuries.
On the other side of the divide, there is a strong body of dissenters who believe that using stem cells from human embryos is the equivalent of committing homicide, which raises the whole thorny question of when human life begins. There is, too, a dark hidden side to stem cell research, namely that it could well lead to an international biological arms race, a matter the authors discuss lucidly and candidly."
