iPS Cells - Oops - Killing Embryos Not Really Needed

I just came across an article that talks about iPS, or Induced Pluripotent Stem cells. How I have never heard of this before escapes me. Not only is it promising, but I am going to be interested in seeing how the Democrats will allow this to shape their thinking. I contend that the very liberal Democrat party of the 21st century is hell bent on promoting a culture of death rather than life, so let's see how this plays out.

First a quick definition courtesy of Wikipedia:

Induced pluripotent stem cells, commonly abbreviated as iPS cells or iPSCs, are a type of pluripotent stem cell artificially derived from a non-pluripotent cell, typically an adult somatic cell, by inducing a "forced" expression of certain genes. iPS cells are believed to be identical to natural pluripotent stem cells, such as embryonic stem cells.

Translation:

1. iPS cells are identical to stem cells derived from embryos.
2. Pluripotent means the cell has the capability of becoming any number of tissue types.
3. iPS cells have been created from non-pluripotent cells, most successfully from adult skin cells.

This is very good news. I was surprised to learn that this technology was successfully accomplished using mice skin cells in 2006 and on human skin cells in 2007.

Why then all the debate on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research? As I've written about in the past, I personally am against killing an embryo on moral grounds, so naturally I am also against using federal tax dollars to fund this research. However, embryonic stem cell research is not illegal. No matter what you think of the morality of embryonic stem cell research, the entire national debate has been over federal funding, not the morality.

I'll be interested to see exactly where this ends up. Will the liberal, secular congress begin to move towards funding iPS cell research over embryonic stem cell research?