Please Stand By While the Age of Miracles Is Briefly Suspended

A damp, nasty Thursday, January 15, 2004. The President's Council on Bioethics is meeting in the downstairs conference room of the Wyndham Hotel, four or five blocks from the White House. Minimal risk-to-benefit ratios for cutting-edge medical research are what the panel is trying to calibrate. Thumbs-up or thumbs-down, live or die. It's 8:45 in the morning, day one of week three of the most crucial election year since 1932, or perhaps 1860. Not to be melodramatic.

To get a better handle on the ethical objections to embryonic-stem-cell research, I've been listening with as much detachment as possible, given my twenty-nine-year-old daughter's ongoing slow death from juvenile (Type 1) diabetes, one of several diseases likely to be cured by this research. Bridget has already undergone a vitrectomy—open-eye surgery to remove vision-blocking blood clots and scar tissue from her vitreous humor—and several rounds ...