STEM-CELL UPDATE:

Dr. Verlinsky, a 62-year-old Russian émigré whose passion is embryo research, might seem the last person Senate Majority leader Bill Frist would invite to Washington as President Bush’s stem-cell policy faces a challenge in Congress. But the Tennessee Republican did just that, and Dr. Verlinsky was at the Capitol building yesterday, briefing a room full of Republican staffers.

The reason is that Dr. Verlinsky’s busy laboratory claimed to have developed another technique that now is emerging as a dark-horse in the stem-cell debate. By fusing existing stem cells with ordinary cells, Dr. Verlinsky says his team has been making new supplies of stem cells without human embryos.

I hope this is right, but let’s not get ahead of the science.