Will Singapore be able to capitalize on stem cell fumbles here at home? According to yesterday’s NY Times (sub required) Singapore is trying to lure US and other leading global stem cell researchers by offering funding and flexibility.
The Times reports that two more of America’s top cancer researchers, Neal Copeland and Nancy Jenkins, will relocate to the new Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology from their previuous posts at the National Institutes of Health outside DC. They are not the first researchers to head to Singapore and will not be the last.
Singapore, which has been investing heavily to grow an artistic and culturally creative environment, still faces a big challenge with openness to outsiders. But it looks like they are making real strides on the first two Ts. (And yes, there is a chewing gum reference in the article)
(posted by Richard)
August 19th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
The sad fact of the matter is, the whole stem cell controversey is more about coalition politics in the pro-life movement than the actual protection of life. Blastocysts cannot be life, because they can still twin, because cross species hybrids (from invitro or bestiality) still reproduce and only the mother’s DNA is active in development until gastrulation – which is the point that stem cells differentiate and are no longer stem cells. You could cut each of the blastocysts to be used in half, implant one half and take the cells from the other and implanted child would be whole. This is the “whole point”. The evangelical right has latched onto the sexual repression of the Roman church in Humanae Vitae and they like it, hence this hamhanded attempt to block science. Sad.