“Medicine’s brightest hope”: few would dispute the UK Stem Cell Foundation’s description of stem-cell research, which offers the best hope yet of unlocking the molecular secrets of illnesses ranging from congenital heart disease to Alzheimer’s. Nor would many in the field question Sir Martin Evans’s claim to the Nobel Prize for Medicine: as the founder of mouse stem-cell research, he laid the groundwork for the techniques now being used to manipulate the complex genetic patterns behind these conditions. Britain’s leading posistion in stem-cell research is, in part, his legacy, and his award is richly deserved.

But much of the work for which he is now being recognised was performed nearly a generation ago. Genetic therapies and the use of stem cells to create new tissues have since moved from the arena of fantasy to laboratories and teaching hospitals. An intense and, in principle, fruitful international competition is under way for global preeminence in the field, and Sir Martin has given warning that excessive bureaucracy in the licensing of stem-cell lines for research could cost Britain that pre-eminence.

His concern as a scientist is understandable. Yet a sense of balance is essential. British stem-cell researchers have shown commendable awareness of the need for transparency about their work, but in no scientific field is progress racing so far ahead of popular understanding, and nowhere is enlightened regulation more important if the visionaries setting the pace are to retain public and political support. For this reason, yesterday’s decision to abandon plans for a merger of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and the Human Tissue Authority (HTA) is welcome. The HFEA has used its autonomy wisely, and deserves to keep it.

Sir Martin is credited with not one but three major breakthroughs: the discovery, with a colleague, of embyonic stem cells in mice in 1981; the removal of those cells from a mouse’s body for replication in lab cultures; and the pioneering of precise gene “targeting” that allows the detailed comparison of healthy DNA strands and those with a genetic predisposition to illness. Similar targeting techniques can now be used to disable or “switch off” individual genes or sets of genes; hence the expectation of a new era of gene-based therapies for a range of critical conditions hitherto regarded as untreatable.

On a practical level, Sir Martin’s work has established the notion of the mouse, most of whose DNA is identical to humans’, as a viable test bed for human genetic research. It has also provided the basis for a huge leap forward in our understanding of disease and cellular development. It is hardly surprising that he has spent his career at the forefront of ethics as well as science. He has forced us to confront new questions not only about stem cells as the building blocks of human life, but also about laboratory animals as means towards improving human life.

These are questions with which the HFEA grapples daily. So far it has coexisted constructively with the scientific community. Even as competition from China, South Korea and the US intensifies, it should not lose sight of its other vital role of keeping the public informed and reassured. Its message should be simple: it is the public, most of all, that stands to benefit from stem-cell research.