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NEWSWEEK: Harvard University and the University of California at San Francisco both announced recently that they will pursue embryonic stem cells research through privately-funded programs. How significant are these announcements? Christopher Thomas Scott: They're significant because they are the first indication that embryonic stem-cell research is alive and well in the United States despite those who predicted its death after the South Korean scandal. Second, these are two blue chip organizations. These scientists are very good. You couldn't have picked a better trio. And at UCSF, they're building a world-leading stem-cell section. It's all good news. Christopher Thomas Scott The Bush administration cut off federal funds for embryonic stem cell research in 2001. How much do you think that set back efforts to find new treatments for some of these diseases? I think it has created some fairly pronounced effects, but proving it is another matter. It's only been five years. My group at Stanford is looking really closely at this. We've been collaborating with Jennifer McCormick [a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics]. She compared the rate of announcements of new results in he United States against the rate of groundbreaking stem cell papers in other countries and found that, right after the 2001 Bush announcements-and, in particular, in 2004 through 2006-the rate of U.S. new results has started to taper off while the rate in other countries has started to increase. That confirms what a lot of us are kind of suspicious about. I go to a lot of international meetings for stem cell research. In 2002, U.S. scientists were prominent. Now, not so much. It's folks from Israel, the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore and China-places where stem cell research is permitted, even encouraged. This is just the first blush of effects of the policy. It will have a bad effect on the inventiveness of U.S. researchers. And new ways of doing research create new ways of doing products that become drugs and therapies for our citizens. If the process is thwarted or retarded, we don't have the benefit of developing therapies at home. They go somewhere else. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn