U.S. Losing Edge in Stem Cell Research

[fizzana]

It's official: The United States has fallen significantly behind in mining the promising field of stem cell research to treat disease.

A momentous milestone — a team of South Korean researchers has announced its successful harvesting of stem cells from a cloned human embryo — is a feat U.S. researchers have been striving to achieve since at least 2001.

The script, many U.S. scientists say, was essentially written by the Bush administration when it decided to restrict federal funding for research in the politically charged field.

<snip>

While they hailed what they considered a landmark occasion, U.S. scientists lamented that a technology largely created in the richest nation on earth was getting more support abroad

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=562&e=8&u=/ap/20040213/ap_on_hi_te/cloning_lag_1

Could there have been any other result. This administration is batting about .003 so far. It manages to screw up everything it touches.

[KamaAina]

1. Back to the Dark Ages we go

Scientific research banned because it might upset the poor widdle anti's. Evolution out of the public schools. Airline pilots proselytizing while they turn on the "No Smoking" sign.

How long before people (presumably female) start getting burned at the stake?

[Drifter]

2. Thank AWOL for that ...

I can remember that wishy-washy "No new Stem-Cells" decision early in his term. The only thought that came to me was that he was stiffling medical research and advancement for a few wack-o religous nuts. It is now coming true.

Hats off to the SK team who managed to accomplish something truly breakthrough. A source of stem cells without creation of a human life. But, as predicted, the religious right is still furious over this.

Cheers
Drifter

[tom_paine]

3. US losing ground in ALL research

This is not suprising. Totalitarian Nations cannot compete with the free flow of information and collegial, unfettered academic freedoms of the Free World.

(sheesh, I worked the word "free" into this post so many time you;d think I was a Paid Bushevik Propagandist!)

[aquart]

4. Told you so, George.

God, he actively works to make us third rate.

[Sagan]

5. God doesn't want us to research stem cells...

The monkey man told us so.

[jburton]

6. Kerry has a good line in some of his speeches

"This is the most anti-science administration we have ever had"

or something along those lines. sad.

[Sandpiper]

8. How long till we ban medicine

all together and institute a policy of faith healings only? :crazy:

[jsw_81]

7. I'm not surprised

This is what happens when you put a fundamentalist nutjob like Bush in the White House. This is an idiot who thinks that the world is 5,000 years old and that fossils are creatures that drowned in Noah's Flood.

People, we have GOT to get him out of there this fall. For some, especially those who are suffering from horrible diseases that might be cured thanks to increased stem cell research, this is literally a matter of life and death. We cannot let them down in November.

[Sandpiper]

9. Ask Nancy Reagan

If she opposes stem cell research.

[NJCher]

10. remember the story a month or so ago

About the Japanese taking the lead in solar? This is something the U.S. could easily have gotten off the ground. Instead, when the oil well runs dry, we'll be going into hock to pay the Japanese.


Cher

[Malva Zebrina]

11. Once Bush came out with his stem cell mandate

restricting research on it, the scientists interested went elsewhere to other parts of the globe. Better believe it.

[heidler]

12. They blamed & laughed at Hitler for Germany's Brain Drain,

So now we have our own Supremely selected mad man.