Sometimes--more often than we may realize--a fatally flawed idea is never officially abandoned only quietly discarded at the same time proponents continue to assure everyone all is not lost.

That happened years ago when advocates said they had found the miracle cure for everything from Alzheimer's to the common cold: brain tissue harvested from aborted babies. In fact, it not only never "cured" nothing and no one, it also had devastating side effects on the recipients into whose body the tissue was transplanted.

Such may be the fate (and sooner rather than later) for the hoopla surrounding embryonic stem cells (ESC, for short). The tide not only has shifted, we can hope that it may soon leave those holding onto ESC beached.

The high mucky mucks gathered in Madison, Wisconsin, this week for a three-day "2008 World Stem Cell Summit." According to a story by Mark Johnson and Kathleen Gallagher about a thousand "researchers, financiers and policy-makers" came to the city "where James Thomson started a scientific revolution almost a decade ago." That 1998 "revolution" came about when Thomson was credited with being the first researcher to isolate human embryonic stem cells.

Try to wrap your head around the import of this second sentence: "If any need confirmation of the rapidly changing landscape, it should come with this announcement planned for the summit: The two Madison companies co-founded by Thomson have merged and shifted their focus to products involving non-embryonic stem cells."

We have written dozens and dozens and dozens of stories making the case that ESC research is not only morally dubious, it is also strewn with technical difficulties and a slew of side effects. But until something better came along, there was considerable momentum to keep the research dollars flowing.

There always had been much better, much more likely to work alternatives. Now that range (and visibility) of alternatives is impossible to ignore, even as the diehards insist ESC research must continue.

Johnson and Gallagher cite the breakthrough that in many ways has re-revolutionalized the field.

"Last November, Thomson's team and a separate group from Japan made history and suggested a new direction for stem cells by reprogramming human skin cells back to an embryonic state. The new cells are known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells."

Scientists have used the technique to "create human cell lines from people with a host of different diseases," they write. "The cell lines hold the promise of allowing scientists to gain a new window into the disease process and a powerful new tool for testing drugs. Longer term, the new technology may allow doctors to use patients' own cells to treat genetic and other ailments." (There are many, many other alternatives. To name just a few, stem cells found in amniotic fluid, cord blood stem cells, placentas, and various other sources generically described as "adult stem cell.")

Speaking of schizophrenia, you can read other stories about the same conference and you hear worries expressed that the next president will be just as uninterested as pro-life President George Bush has been in extracting stem cells from human embryos or cloning embryos for the sole purpose of scavenging them for their stem cells.

Those same stories will regurgitate the party line, as if nothing has changed: "Stem cells taken from balls of cells that develop days after conception offer promise for regenerative medicine because they give rise to all tissues in the body," as Reuters put it.

It took over a decade for the bloom to come off the rose on the "potential" of brain tissue harvested from aborted babies. No doubt we will see the same lag with ESC.

The task is to continue to vigorously resist attempts to channel state and federal money into ESC research and to continue to tout the many ethically unobjectionable alternatives which have a proven track record of helping patients.

Please send your comments to daveandrusko@hotmail.com.