America’s Stem Cell Mess
By Josephine Johnston,
The Scientist
| 10. 13. 2010
[Opinion]
It’s hard not to feel sorry for American embryonic stem cell (ESC) researchers. Over the dozen years since the cells were first derived, they’ve been expected to meet federal rules that change with each president, research guidelines from the National Academy of Sciences as interpreted by their institutions, and separate requirements from state and private funders. While the extremely restrictive policies of the Bush administration caused a number of alternative funders to step up to the plate, each comes with its own rules, restrictions, and reporting requirements. Labs with a mix of federal and private funding are required to account for the monies separately, leading to the somewhat absurd practice of color-coding lab instruments and workspace so that nothing paid for with federal money is used to do something federal policies prohibit.
The picture brightened last year when President Obama lifted his predecessor’s restrictions, allowing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to release new guidelines for an expanded ESC research program. But this August, a judge issued a preliminary injunction putting that entire program on hold. NIH has appealed the...
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Bioethics needs an update
The National Research Act is now 50 years old. It was signed into law on July 12, 1974, as a direct response to publicity about the 1932 “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The Hastings Bioethics Forum celebrated its anniversary with an...
Image courtesy National Human Genome Research Institute
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to encourage effective medical advances while also ensuring that patients and research subjects are protected. This dual mandate demands tricky judgment calls that are made more difficult by outside pressures of several kinds, political, judicial, and especially commercial. This April story at Bloomberg examines one deeply troubling pattern of regulatory capture:
Americans Are Paying Billions to Take Drugs That Don’t Work
Companies are increasingly...
By Elizabeth Chuck, NBC News | 07.09.2024
A Netflix docuseries has put a spotlight on the unregulated world of sperm donation, particularly the lack of stopgap measures that might prevent donors who have been banned by one country from simply going elsewhere to donate more.
Released earlier...
By Amanda Becker and Shefali Luthra, The 19th | 07.08.2024
Image by Duke University Archives from Flickr
Republicans have adopted a slate of policy positions ahead of next week’s convention that does not call for a federal legislative abortion ban, but opens the door to establishing fetal personhood.
The Republican...