Rick Weiss, Center for American Progress

He wrote for the WA Post for 15 years, and a great many of those stories were about stem cells.

I would make the point that stem cells have been the seminal iconic story of science journalism of our time . . .both good and bad. What's that story about? Science and progress, the possibility of cures, a chance to let readers know how research is done, how genes and cells work

At the same time it's an epic moral story about the beginnings of life . . if we can even talk about that--because as a great scientist once told me, in truth life actually began only once, and that was billions of years ago ( I LOVE that)

And of course it's a great political story, a philosophical and religious story.

Then there are the hype stories and the people trying to sell us a bill of goods. A researcher once told me that he knew stem cells could not cure alzheimers but he would say the opposite because people needed a fairy tale.

We have senators standing up talking about embryos being dismembered, when we all know that 5-day-old embryos don't have any members to be dissed . . .

So, how is this going to be play out now? Science journalism is shrinking with the newspapers.