"During medieval times, alchemists convinced patrons of their ability to turn baser metals into gold, silver, and even aqua vita - the 'elixir of life.' Elaborate fraudulent demonstrations were staged to attract venture capital from the credulous, with the promise of fabulous returns."
-Jeffrey Kacirk, "Forgotten English"

Just four years ago, modern day alchemists began their sales pitch to convince credulous Californians to provide "venture capital" to fund their search for the "elixir of life." More than a million citizens eagerly affixed their signatures to the initiative petitions - and Proposition 71 qualified for the November 2004 ballot.

One of the major components of that proposition was that the funds be specifically focused on pluripotent stem cell and progenitor cell research among other vital research opportunities that cannot, or are unlikely to, receive timely or sufficient federal funding, unencumbered by limitations that would impede the research.

In other words - Proposition 71, an amendment to California's constitution, directed scientists to do research that the National Institutes of Health would not fund because of the ethical restrictions President Bush imposed in August of 2001. (See http://www.cirm.ca.gov/pdf/prop71.pdf)

Californians can vividly recall the advertisements that summer of 2004 featuring earnest looking scientists - attired in their white coats - promising "cures" from every sort of ailment - diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, spinal cord injury - if only they would agree to fund their research. Californians can also recall the pleas from the afflicted for healing - if only the voters "cared" enough to pass the initiative. Our airwaves and newspapers were filled with hope and promises.

Those that expressed concerns - like the California Catholic bishops, as well as both progressive and conservative groups - were dismissed by the science community and only meagerly covered by the media. The concerns were:

---Morally, was it permissible to subject women - possibly poor women who needed financial help - to massive doses of hormones in order to secure their eggs for research?

---Ethically, was it right to create a cloned human embryo just to destroy it for its stem cells?

---Fiscally, was it prudent to borrow and spend on airy promises - when California was already heavily into deficit spending?

Proposition 71 passed overwhelmingly to the applause of the "enlightened." Proponents invested $30 million and California taxpayers rewarded them with $3 billion.

Now three years later, we who opposed Proposition 71 are asking: Where are the cures? Where are the successes? In fact, where are the actual human trials? The answer: There aren't any.

And while California scientists pursued the false gold of embryonic stem cell research, scientists from other states quietly took another path - one which did not involve the destruction of embryos.

Dr. James A. Thomson from the University of Wisconsin, who was one of two scientists who first isolated embryonic stem cells, was also one of the two scientists who reported on Nov. 20, 2007, that his laboratory had found a way to turn human skin cells into what appeared to be embryonic stem cells - without ever using an embryo.

And perhaps, even more fascinating, in an interview with the New York Times, Dr. Thomson confessed that he had had ethical concerns about embryonic research from the outset, saying:

"If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough," he said. "I thought long and hard about whether I would do it." (See http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/science/22stem.html)

Dr. Thomson, acting on his qualms and conducting research within the parameters necessary for NIH funds, found an ethical - and not incidentally, a simpler - way to attain the stem cells that may provide some cures. And he - unlike the California scientists/alchemists - has not made any extravagant claims of cures in the near future.

So where does this recent scientific breakthrough leave Californians? Will the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) - the vehicle for the dispensing of the $3 billion appropriated by Proposition 71 - refocus its funding to non-embryonic stem cell research which is both ethical and successful? Or will the California alchemists stubbornly continue putting aside moral concerns while destroying embryos in the race to discover the "elixir of life" on the promise that cures were just around the corner.

"Elaborate demonstrations…to attract…the credulous with the promise of fabulous returns." Not much has changed since the Middle Ages.

Carol Hogan is the communications director of the California Catholic Conference, the public policy office of the Catholic Bishops of California.