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Dear PIEN List Members Please understand, I am merely reporting, as I did in the "Mandarin" dustup (which just re-emerged on the List) that led one person to urge me to leave the US. Since Murray Charter's death I have tried in a small way, using Diane Wysak's great posts to me, to help fill the news vacuum he left. My being bitter or angry is not the "news" or the "issue" nor does it change the reality of what is happening or not happening in the world. Ray Falling behind on stem-cell research By Christopher Thomas Scott and Jennifer McCormick | April 18, 2006 FIVE YEARS ago, President Bush announced that funding from the National Institutes of Health could not be used to develop stem-cell lines made from newly donated embryos, a decision that has hobbled US researchers. His action spurred conservative members of Congress to introduce legislation that would criminalize both research with human embryonic stem cells and their future therapeutic use. If passed, the measure will send scientists, patients, and physicians to jail for up to 10 years and fine them $1 million. Competing legislation designed to overturn the ban was written a year later. Both measures passed the House and are now before the Senate. Bush has promised to veto any law that would override his policy. The consequences of the Bush policy are profound and unambiguous. NIH officials admit the agency has ceded leadership in the field. Scientists no longer undertake hegiras to Washington to learn about important advances in stem- cell biology. Instead, countries where the research is encouraged have stepped into the breach, making new lines at an astonishing rate. Their discoveries are increasingly showcased at scientific meetings. And now, evidence confirms the nation is falling further behind its competitors. One of the best measures of scientific productivity is publishing peer-reviewed research in scientific journals. When categorizing human embryonic stem-cell research papers according to where the work was done, research has accelerated at a faster pace internationally. In 2002, roughly one-third of the papers were from US research groups. By 2004, US groups accounted for only one-quarter of the publications. Government policy may be among the factors contributing to the gap between US and international publications in the field. Why worry about this trend? The answer lies with our biomedical ''discovery machine," which operates on a seven-step assembly line: 1.) An academic scientist designs an experiment to answer an important question. 2.) The scientist applies to the government to fund the research. 3.) The money pays for students and fellows who conduct the research. 4.) The results are published in journals, which advance the field. 5.) An invention may result. This may lead to a patent, which then is licensed to a start-up company. 6.) With a monopoly granted by the patent, the company attracts venture capital. If it is successful, the company grows. 7.) Years later, the discovery becomes a therapy for patients. It takes $28.8 billion, the annual budget of the NIH, to prime this machine. Every year, the money generates an astonishing amount of fundamental knowledge and thousands of biomedical discoveries. With no initial funding, this apparatus stops at Step 1. With no money, what do the scientists do? They choose other careers. Worse, they leave to do research in other countries. When scientists abandon their laboratories, a field can vanish. A scientific discipline is designed to grow exponentially. A professor will train a handful of students, some of whom go on to become professors and train more students. Some PhDs enter industry, where they lead projects and hire more trained workers. Funded properly, this collection of specialists becomes a formidable force, building research centers, driving innovation, and creating business sectors. The government front-loads the process; ingenuity and free enterprise takes care of the rest. Cutting off funding will stop science. And no scientist dares pin a career on a discipline that could be outlawed at any moment. Other countries such as Singapore, China, and the United Kingdom know this, and are raising money to lure American scientists. The pioneering model we use to benefit our own citizens is being hijacked, one laboratory at a time. While these signs are troubling, American biomedical research is still strong. Such states as California and New Jersey show resilience, shoring up medicine's most promising frontier. Most embryonic stem-cell biologists hold on mightily, waiting for Congress to vote. A vote that will send them back to their labs, not to jail, where they can get on with the business of keeping us at the furthest edge of medicine, where we belong. Christopher Thomas Scott is executive director of the Stanford University Program on Stem Cells and Society and author of ''Stem Cell Now: From the experiment that shook the world to the new politics of life." Jennifer McCormick is a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics. © Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn