Wherever human embryonic stem cell research is debated, newspaper surveys purport to show that a majority support it. However, because most people know little about even the most elementary aspects of stem cell science, they are ill-equipped to form an considered opinion. What happens when they know more? One window on this is offered by a focus group conducted by Professor Naomi Pfeffer, of London Metropolitan University.

Writing in the journal Social Science & Medicine, she reports that she asked a focus group of British women how they felt about donating foetal tissue to research and how this might affect their views on stem cell research. What she discovered confounded the superficial surveys so often cited in the media.

"This focus group research found initial enthusiasm for the donation of the aborted fetus for medical research, which is understood as a 'good thing', diminished as participants gained information and thought more carefully about the implications of such a decision... But what made stem cell research more troubling is its association with renewal, regeneration, and immortality which participants understood as somehow reinstating and even developing the fetus' physical existence and social biography beyond abortion, the very thing abortion is meant to eliminate. By the end of the focus groups, participants had co-produced a tendency to refuse." ~ BioNews, Aug 18