What remains to be seen is whether these cloned embryonic stem cells are more useful therapeutically than the noncontroversial induced pluripotent stem cells, and questions linger about their effectiveness.
To get patent protection under India's laws, companies need to prove that new versions of their products are therapeutically more beneficial than earlier versions on which patents have expired.
We are seeing more evidence that stem cells can be therapeutically very useful and are likely to be widely used in the future to treat a broad variety of diseases.
This is not only a diagnosis encoded in the narratives patients tell of symptoms, but also deep and therapeutically consequential understandings of the persons who bear symptoms are made possible in the course of hearing the narratives told of illness.