William Saletan has a good article on how biotech issues are threatening to upset existing political categories. He gives an admirably evenhanded account of the stakes as each side sees them, but then points out that these debates are making for strange bedfellows:

On the left, the instinct is to treat ESC research like health care. “[Missouri’s] Amendment 2 is about finding cures and saving lives—nothing more, and nothing less,” said an ad for the ballot measure. But in the stem-cell fight, the teams are all messed up. You’ve never seen conservatives so exercised about protecting women from “Big Biotech,” or liberals so in love with drug companies. From California to Michigan to Massachusetts, the most common argument for stem-cell subsidies, next to saving lives, is that they’ll attract high-tech business.