THIS ARTICLE LEAVES OUT A VERY CRITICAL RATIONALIZATION FOR ARMSTRONG'S WORK. In 2005, Wu Suk Hwang, from Seoul South Korea was found to have fabricated this EXACT experiment. Hwang's work was accepted without skepticism by a number of researchers who did not know better, which resulted in millions of dollars of research money (from the NIH and private sources) spent to elaborate his findings-- which were not fruitful because he fabricated his data.
So, Armstrong's work is a FINAL, CONCLUSIVE repetition of these experiments to determine IF scientific validity EXISTS to support Hwang's premise. Also, the experiment consists not of creating embryos, but of creating a pluripotent (stem) cell from a differentiated(has already become a specific type of cell in the body) somatic cell (skin) which can then be induced to form other cells in the body (such as brain, neuron bodies, organ cells) for therapy.
The scientific community needs to know if this premise (that a somatic, differentiated cell can indeed be reversed to become a stem cell) is actually correct. Should it be proven correct through appropriate experiments, scientists could spare the entire use of embryonic stem cells and defer to using somatic cells-- a moral solution to a stem cell problem.
By the way, I worked along with the leaders in US Stem cell research, who knew Hwang's work was fradulent as soon as they saw it because this premise would be so revolutionary as to change the way we understand stem cell physiology entirely.
We already do have a moral (and very successful) solution, namely adult and cord blood stem cells.