Dr. Asa Abeliovich in his lab at Columbia Medical Center.

Embryonic stem cells are thought to be the Zeligs of human biology—miraculously capable of renewing themselves indefinitely and taking on the traits of any other cell in the body. With the right research and experimentation, they could be used as a virtual fountain of youth to regenerate human tissue and cure any number of diseases that involve lost or damaged cells—diabetes, ALS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, several types of cancer, and spinal-cord injuries like the late Christopher Reeve’s. True, there have been no breakthroughs yet—which of course means there may never be—but leading scientists, like Columbia’s Gerald Fischbach, are bullish. “I believe within five years there will be phase-one clinical trials using human embryonic stem cells, either in Parkinson’s disease or diabetes,” he says. “That may be going out on a limb, but it’s not 50 years, and it’s not 1 year. And with the first success, everything will change.”

Even before their first extraction and successful isolation in a petri dish in 1998, stem cells courted controversy. Embryonic stem cells are some of the first cells to spring from a fertilized egg. Science gives the embryo a different name—a blastocyst—but taking stem cells from a blastocyst requires destroying it, and the Catholic Church says the 200-cell blastocyst is a human life. Other opponents say this research could lead to the rampant harvesting of human embryos, or to human cloning, or even to Frankenstein-like genetic engineering. In response, stem-cell advocates say the blastocyst is destroyed before its implantation in the uterus—and therefore before the egg’s cells ever lay out even the most basic plan to build the human body. They also argue that the eggs used for this research come from in-vitro-fertilization clinics, chosen from thousands of frozen embryos that are awaiting eventual disposal.

The debate was moot at first, at least in this country: In 1995, the Republican-controlled Congress banned the use of federal money to create or harm human embryos for research. But in 1999, the Clinton administration came up with a creative solution: allow private funding to pay for extracting stem cells and NIH money to pay for the research that followed. That compromise didn’t last long. In an early example of a faith-based initiative, George W. Bush said during the 2000 campaign that he was against human embryonic stem-cell research, and in August 2001, NIH sent down a new policy that stopped just short of banning it altogether. About 60 existing, self-propagating stem-cell lines would still be available for federally funded research; any research that used other human embryonic stem cells was prohibited from getting NIH support. What NIH is saying, essentially, is that scientists may still tinker with the stem cells found in mouse embryos or fiddle with the stem cells found in adults. But the ones found in human embryos—the ones that might replace any cell in the body—are off-limits. This is the policy that exists today and will continue, presumably, for at least the next four years.

Scientists in general despise the restriction, calling it grounded not in science or bioethics but pure politics. Worse, they say, those 60 NIH-approved cell lines the president mentioned turn out to be little more than a dozen. And most of those cell lines aren’t suitable for the best research: They’re either difficult to maintain or have been tainted by other cells.

Proposition 71 harnessed some of the outrage felt not just by researchers but by advocates of the sick. Hollywood couples Lucy Fisher and Doug Wick and Janet and Jerry Zucker each have a daughter with type-1 juvenile diabetes, which destroys the cells that regulate blood sugar; embryonic stem-cell research is thought of as one path to a cure. They formed a group called CuresNow that has been pressing for pro-stem-cell legislation. In 2002, the California State Legislature passed a law encouraging therapeutic cloning—a hot-button issue for the opponents of stem-cell research—which is a way to create a more genetically diverse selection of embryonic stem cells by replacing the nucleus of an egg with the nucleus of another cell. Even though there was no money behind the law, the state became known as research-friendly. And when a new bill to fund the research failed the following year, stem-cell advocates took their case to the people with Prop 71.

It’s a strange wrinkle of the California constitution that even allows for sweeping ballot questions. It’s not unprecedented for California voters to sign off on tremendous policy changes on Election Day; Proposition 13 in 1978 cut California’s property taxes by 30 percent, setting the stage for the Reagan federal tax cuts a few years later. The champion of the Prop 71 effort was Robert Klein, a multimillionaire real-estate developer and father of a child with diabetes, who donated $3 million to the effort and enlisted help from, among others, Bill Gates, to raise $25 million for campaign ads and lobbying. Strategically, the beauty of Prop 71—aside from the blue-state appeal of acing out the White House—was that it promised to make the state money. The idea is for long-term bonds to be repaid with the fruits of new research: royalties and licensing fees, plus tax revenues, new jobs, and new companies. To dispense the grants, Klein shrewdly envisioned the local NIH model, turning anyone who might benefit from the research—patients, families of patients, hospitals, researchers, medical schools—into stakeholders in a powerful and wealthy new agency. The pitch worked. Even the president’s good friend, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, came out in favor of the measure. California human embryonic stem-cell research is seen now as an economic-development tool that could help cure not just diseases but California’s financial woes.