Actually-This-Is-In-The-Post Watch

UPDATE: Item corrected in this post. I misread the story--don't ask how, Weiss is clear!--but the technique uses embryonic stem cells, just the ones from human embryos already killed.

Original post follows:

I've linked to a number of stories about major adult, placental and cord-blood stem-cell advances that the Post hasn't run--but this isn't one of them. This one they got: Skin Cells Convered to Stem Cells by Rick Weiss on A1

Scientists for the first time have turned ordinary skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells -- without having to use human eggs or make new human embryos in the process, as has always been required in the past, a Harvard research team announced yesterday.

The technique uses laboratory-grown human embryonic stem cells -- such as the ones that President Bush has already approved for use by federally funded researchers -- to "reprogram" the genes in a person's skin cell, turning that skin cell into an embryonic stem cell itself.

The approach -- details of which are to be published this week in the journal Science but were made public on the journal's Web site yesterday -- is still in an early stage of development. But if further studies confirm its usefulness, it could offer an end run around the heated social and religious debate that has for years overshadowed the field of human embryonic stem cell research.

Good to see the Post begin playing catch-up here. More tomorrow, I'm turning in.