In New Jersey, which bills itself as the medicine cabinet of the nation, the potentially lucrative stem cell research race has gone off with both a bang and a whimper. Just 14 months ago, James E. McGreevey, then the governor, signed a bill to establish the nation's first state-supported stem research institute, proclaiming, over the objections of Roman Catholic bishops, that the frontiers of medical science should not be hemmed in by politics. Earlier in the year, New Jersey had become the second state in the nation, after California, to pass a law specifically legalizing embryonic stem cell research. Acting...