Almost everyone is peeved at Michael West. In November, the headline-grabbing president and CEO of privately held Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Worcester, Massachusetts, announced that his researchers had produced the first human embryos using a cloning technique. Dr. West's stated goal was not to clone a human being, but rather to create a factory for omnipotent embryonic stem cells, which could be put into service as regenerative medicine to repair damaged organs. And while ACT's financial backers are pleased, critics charge that he reopened Pandora's box--and for what? There is no commercial impact in sight for the company's research.

"Michael is a true believer in cloning," says I. Richard Garr, president and CEO of Neuralstem, a research firm focused on harvesting stem cells from brain cells. "I don't question his motives, just his timing." Others, like Annemarie Moseley, president and CEO of Osiris Therapeutics, which develops cell therapies using adult stem cells instead of controversial embryonic stem cells, worry that ACT's announcement might indelibly fuse the words cloning and stem cells in the public's mind. (Publicly funded research using embryonic stem cells, which are derived from aborted fetuses, umbilical cords, and embryos produced from in-vitro fertilization, was mostly banned in the United States last year, but privately funded research continues.)

There's great debate about just how important ACT's discovery really is. Experts in the field, not without motives of their own, say the research is much ado about nothing, since the experiment failed to produce therapeutically viable embryonic stem cells. Regardless, Dr. West has managed to further irk a constituency that was already skittish about stem cells. Critics--bioethicists, abortion foes, church groups, members of Congress, and the Bush administration--believe cloning an embryo, even if it does not produce a living human being, is a violation of the sanctity of human life and greases the slippery slope toward eugenics.

Some U.S. lawmakers were so appalled that a private company would clone an embryo that they vowed to introduce legislation that would extend the stem cell research ban to include private efforts. Close to a dozen states already ban research on human embryos, like those that would normally be discarded by fertility clinics. And there are drives afoot in several states to criminalize all research efforts that produce human embryos for the sole purpose of experimentation.

It's unfair to blame Dr. West for the myriad problems that beset the field of stem cell research. Indeed, if stem cell research had cured even one diabetic by regenerating insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells or restored memory and lucidity to even one Alzheimer's disease patient, all qualms about this experimental research would likely be pushed aside. But it's unclear at this point just how Dr. West's bombshell helped his cause, much less that of the field of stem cell research. Then again, history is filled with discoveries that first seemed preposterous.