STEM CELLS….This story in the LA Times this morning caught my eye:
The South Korean researcher who was the first to clone human embryos for the creation of stem cells plans to establish a worldwide stem cell bank to make the technology available to other scientists.
The World Stem Cell Foundation, to be unveiled today in Seoul, intends to produce about 100 new cell lines each year and make them available to scientists, particularly those in the U.S. who have been stymied in their research by federal funding restrictions.
….”I think U.S. scientists will be lining up to request them,” said Dr. George Q. Daley, a professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School.
I am just delighted that George Bush’s pandering to the Christian Right has allowed South Korea to overtake us as a world leader in an area that’s almost certain to be critical for future biotech development. But hey ? we can always buy our drugs from Asia, right? We’ll pay for them with all that revenue we get from writing blogs and making movies.
I don’t remember him promising to make the United States a scientific backwater when he ran for president in 2000, but I guess it must have been in the fine print. Good work, George.
