There appears to be a big gunfight on the horizon over stem cell research.  Reports here at Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House threatened on
Tuesday to veto a new bid to lift U.S. President George W.
Bush’s restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research as
the Senate began considering the bipartisan bill.

and Therapeutics Daily: 

WASHINGTON, April 10, 2007 (AFP) - The US medical community is pressing
on with its plea to end limits on government financing for embryonic
stem cell research, but President George W. Bush refuses to lift the
restrictions.

Beneficiaries of stem cell research would include victims of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (did I prove I am a doctor writing that), also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.  ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Information here on ALS and at the National Institutes of Health on stem cell research.  Those dying nerve cell functions

may be ‘regenerated’ using multipotent stem cells (information from the Cal Ripken funded Lou Gehrig Disease -ALS- research center at Johns Hopkins)

Stem cells might also be used in treated athletic injuries. Link to NY Times story here:
(Thanks to the Wizard of Odds)

The latest curative leap to heal professional athletes and weekend
warriors alike may sound like science fiction, but it could transform
sports medicine. Some doctors and researchers say that in a few years
the use of primitive stem cells from infants’ umbilical cord blood
could grow new knee ligaments or elbow tendons creating a therapy that
becomes the vanguard of sports injury repair.

Let’s get this bill passed and going.  My cousin’s husband died after a long and difficult course of Lou Gehrig’s disease last year. ALS may be linked to chemicals on athletic fields and golf courses.  We need treatments for this fatal disease.  Lou Gehrig who died of ALS in 1941 says DO IT NOW!