A decade of breakthroughs
It may be hard to fathom now, but just a decade ago, when today’s graduating college seniors were entering middle school, research using embryonic stem cells, building blocks that can become every cell and tissue type in the human body, was at the center of a political and religious firestorm. Just three years earlier, in 2001, the White House had issued an executive order barring the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research. Yet some Harvard officials rallied behind the vital nature of research that held promise of ultimately producing treatments and cures for a host of intractable, often fatal diseases, from diabetes to cancer to Parkinson’s disease to heart disease to Alzheimer’s disease. Lawrence H. Summers and Steven E. Hyman, who were then, respectively, Harvard’s president and provost, asked: If not Harvard, where? If not now, when? With the help of Harvard scientists and a core group of dedicated...