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Embryonic stem cell research, which uses material from fertilized human eggs to explore possible treatments for a wide range of medical conditions, has become an issue the religious right counts on to mobilize voters. According to polls, Americans support embryonic stem cell research by a wide margin, but opponents have worked hard to tie it to the abortion debate. They’ve been so successful that for many people the very phrase “stem cell research” conjures up a grim vision of test tube babies, farmed for tissue and discarded. In Right to Recover: Winning the Political and Religious Wars Over Stem Cell Research in America (Nightengale Press, 322 pp., $19.95), Nashvillian Yvonne Perry tries to bring the rhetoric back to reality. She counters widely held myths by explaining the science of stem cells in layman’s terms, and makes a passionate case for pursuing the medical potential of this controversial research.

Perry begins Right to Recover with a straightforward description of just what a stem cell is and why the term “embryonic stem cell” is misleading to non-scientists. The cells with the greatest research potential are produced in the very earliest period after a human egg is fertilized. This tiny clump of cells is properly called a blastocyst and contains no developmental characteristics whatsoever. It is not an embryo and will never become one unless it is implanted in a woman’s uterus. Nevertheless, politicians and religious leaders have promoted the notion that scientists want to “kill embryos” to harvest stem cells. The federal funding ban and the public’s opposition, Perry contends, are largely due to this semantic confusion. Doctors and researchers “are mislabeling their own product when they refer to fertilized eggs (zygotes, morulas and blastocysts) as embryonic stem cells. The media is simply repeating this misnomer and fueling the flames of argument.”

Perry brings admirable clarity to her discussion of stem cell science, but things get murky as she moves into ethical and religious questions. A former devout Christian who now embraces what she calls “a metaphysical view of life,” Perry wants to speak to believers who are straddling the fence on the stem cell issue. She does so effectively, marshaling the arguments of Nashville minister Dan Bloodworth to her cause. Unfortunately, she follows Bloodworth’s biblical analysis with her own attack on the historical brutality and theological inconsistency of the Christian churches. She makes her case well, but the moderate-to-conservative Christian contingent is unlikely to stick with her, especially when she refers to concepts such as “feminine energy bifurcated from a Source that contains both male and female energies.”

That’s a shame, because the remainder of the book contains a wealth of information about the history of the U.S. stem cell debate, and the status of research worldwide. Her discussion of scientific developments and possible medical benefits is enough to give the most rigid opponents second thoughts. Even that paragon of backward states, the Islamic Republic of Iran, approved new stem cell research in 2003.

Perry appears 7 to 9 p.m. Oct. 23 at the West End Borders.