Rock Doc

It sounds like science fiction when you first hear about it, but some people see it as a way of addressing both animal welfare issues and environmental concerns. I’m talking about growing meat cells for human consumption from stem cells harvested from a cow. This so-called “cultured beef” recently was unveiled in London by a group led by Mark Post, a physiologist at the Netherland’s Maastricht University.

It’s been known for a while that an anonymous donor contributed money toward an effort to grow a hamburger patty in a laboratory. That donor is now unmasked as Sergey Brin, co-founder of Goog...