Scientists believe the research could eventually yield treatments for such diseases as diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, heart disease and cancer.

But despite the promise of the idea, and hundreds of gene therapy trials, only a handful have yet yielded possibly useful treatments.

But the study is unlikely to yield new treatments any time soon and needs to be confirmed by other researchers in other populations, Dr. Rosand added.

Stem cell and cloning experiments could yield treatments for disease, and so decisions about them have the potential to affect all of us.

The researchers have yet to isolate the pheromones proper, but they said the work might eventually yield new birth control methods and treatments for infertility.

They obviously are aware of considerable public support for stem cell research because of its potential to yield treatments someday for diabetes, heart disease, neurological ailments and other illnesses.

In the future, experts say, such research may yield effective medical treatments to augment or even replace the intensive behavioral therapy that is the prescription most autistic children now receive.

In the long term, the new results may yield better treatments.

So far, however, it has yielded very few treatments.

Dr. Nelson, a medical doctor, has been studying them since in the hope that a better understanding of how they succeed in hibernation will yield treatments for human disease.