Sweating the Details: An Interview with Jamie Thomson

If you had to name the most controversial scientific achievement of the past decade, you'd be hard pressed to top the development of human embryonic stem [ES] cells. Human ES cells followed on the heels of another major technological advance—Dolly, the cloned ewe. Together, these remarkable breakthroughs have stimulated great public interest and have ushered in a new era in the exploration of human biology. At the center of the ES maelstrom is a soft-spoken and intensely private scientist from the Genome Center at the University of Wisconsin. Jamie Thomson (Image 1), who is also Director of Regenerative Biology at the new Morgridge Institute for Research and the founder of two companies, is purposeful, with an obvious knack for a difficult experiment, yet seems a bit uncomfortable in the limelight his work has generated.