So, yet again, another advance in Stem Cells has been made that doesn’t involve destroying an embryo. Why haven’t you heard about it? Well, chances are your news sources have a template for stem cell stories that’s only half the actual story.

The template usually consists of a few things.

1. They let you believe that the evil Christian lunatics in this country have made stem cell research illegal.

2. They let you believe that the only advancements being made in the field are with embryonic stem cells.

3. They let you believe that embryonic stem cells will cure everything from caivities to paralysis.

4. They let you believe that nothing can be done if the federal government doesn’t fund embryonic stem cell research.

As I’ve chronicled on numerous occasions right here on this very blog, there are lots of advancements being made and yet very few are getting the time of day with the alphabet networks, including this one that Reuters kinda posted…

A company that devised a way to make embryonic stem cells using a technique it said does not harm human embryos reported on Thursday it has grown five batches of cells using this method and urged President George W. Bush to endorse it.

Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology has been working with a method sometimes used to test embryos for severe genetic diseases. Called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, it involves taking a single cell from an embryo when it contains only eight or so cells.

The method usually does not harm the embryo, which is frozen for possible future implantation into the mother’s womb. The ACT team also froze the embryos and used the single cell that was removed as a source of human embryonic stem cells.

Dr. Robert Lanza, ACT’s scientific director, said it provides a way to create mass quantities of embryonic stem cells without harming a human embryo. Current stem cell technologies require the embryo’s destruction.

“This is a working technology that exists here and now. It could be used to increase the number of stem cell lines available to federal researchers immediately,” Lanza said by e-mail. “We could send these cells out to researchers tomorrow.”

You would think this would be a glorious breakthrough, right? Embryonic stem cells without destroying the actual embryo! PARTY AT MY PLACE!

Nothing.

Zip.

Barely a murmur.

Why?

Because it’s an election year, and this kind of technology doesn’t play well for the media who have banked on people being uninformed about stem cell research and relying on them to drill the afforementioned template into their heads long enough for it to become “truth.”