Aggregated News
Tuesday's announcement that scientists had found a noncontroversial way to make cells equivalent to human embryonic stem cells did not just change the scientific and ethical landscape. It generated economic and geopolitical tremors through California, New York and about half a dozen other states that have invested -- in some cases heavily -- in embryonic stem cell programs and research centers.
States have together committed billions of dollars to fill the research vacuum left by the Bush administration, which in 2001 declared embryonic stem cell research largely off-limits for federal funding. Their hope has been to attract the best scientists and build research infrastructures, giving them a leg up on efforts to develop promising new stem cell therapies and assuring them futures as biomedical and economic powerhouses.
The possibility that embryonic stem cells will be eclipsed by "ips" cells -- or "induced pluripotent stem cells," "pluripotent" meaning "able to become virtually every kind of" -- which can be created with relative ease and with abundant funding from the National Institutes of Health, could undermine those state-level ambitions and bring an...
States have together committed billions of dollars to fill the research vacuum left by the Bush administration, which in 2001 declared embryonic stem cell research largely off-limits for federal funding. Their hope has been to attract the best scientists and build research infrastructures, giving them a leg up on efforts to develop promising new stem cell therapies and assuring them futures as biomedical and economic powerhouses.
The possibility that embryonic stem cells will be eclipsed by "ips" cells -- or "induced pluripotent stem cells," "pluripotent" meaning "able to become virtually every kind of" -- which can be created with relative ease and with abundant funding from the National Institutes of Health, could undermine those state-level ambitions and bring an...