Whoa Thar Little Stem Cells. Stop Tryin' to Leave the Dang State!

Texas needs stem cell policy, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, likely candidate for governor of Texas, is pushing to save Texas from stem cell obscurity. It is difficult to imagine that the state - dominated by conservative protestants and Catholics - would ever embrace any serious stem cell research plan that includes embryonic cells. Hey ... they execute lots of disabled people in Texas. If that passes must with the Texas pro-life constituency, maybe they'll go for Hurlbut's "kill a disabled embryo" approach! Or maybe not, pardner. Not in Crawford. [thanks Arthur Caplan]

Asian Stem Cell Labs Dwarf Ours

Labs in Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, and Singapore have begun to dwarf labs in the UK, and by extension the US, in terms of physical space, talent, and most important in terms of development of cell lines, and particularly across species lines. We've blogged to death about the insecurity in Wisconsin about other states, particularly California, hogging the stem cell research dollars. And yes, Advanced Cell Technology is moving there. But no state in the U.S. has spent half the money that is budgeted in the research groups in Asia, and it is beginning to show.

What's Up Roundup

Not enough organs in Scotland, and fewer are going to be available.

More about how the world will end, or at least it will feel like that in Wisconsin, if the state doesn't kick up its stem cell spending.

Wisconsin should be more worried about New Jersey, whose new acting governor is going to be asking voters to approve borrowing "hundreds of millions of dollars" to fund embryonic stem cell research.New Jersey's last governor, in early retirement, is being eulogized all over the place for his role in advancing stem cell research there.

A new novel from Jodi Picoult examines purposeful birth for organ donation and Courtney Devores likes it. AJOB will have a review; anybody want to do it?

Seattle PI discusses moral surprise in the election.

Go figure that fewer people want hormone replacement therapy after a study showed that they might harm women. Who would have guessed?

I love this piece in OregonLive about the Seventh-day Adventists' role in Operation Whitecoat, the long-running biologic research program between 1954 and 1973. The courage of these who were exposed to all sorts of horrific germs is interesting. Moreno is quoted.

I love university fluff about professorial accomplishments, because it means that the university recognizes that it actually has a faculty. Here's a nice piece about Bob Levine's appointment to the CDC vaccine task force.

Speaking of university press, this short one by a Princeton undergrad looks at Peter Singers' class' visit to a NICU. Singer visits a NICU. What does he say in his ethics consults??

Leave it to an evangelical to coin a new bioethics term: the bioethics porkfest.

Britain? Stem Cell Leaders? Meet California.

They are running scared in Britain. After months of believing their own press about a purported mass exodus of stem cell researchers, there are some pretty scared venture capitalists now in London. Financial Times' Clive Cookson delivers a eulogy for the era of mass optimism, complete with lots and lots of quotes from folks like Roger Pederson. The UK, by the way, spends just over 25% of the annual amount California has just allocated for stem cell research.

Wisconsin is Petrified of Stem Cell Migration UPDATED

Wisconsin Business reports that California's Prop 71 will create a "giant sucking sound" as big stem cell labs and important scientists are vacuumed up by California. The article asks how much will it take to lure James Thomson? Interesting question...several weeks ago we blogged Alta Charo's comments regarding the threat of Bush policies to Wisconsin. One could be cynical about that threat, given that Wisconsin holds so much intellectual property in stem cell research that Wisconsin profits no matter who is doing the work. But Alta is clearly right that Wisconsin could lose its key figures in stem cell research to Prop 71 and to California.

Wisconsin Worries it Will Fall Behind in Stem Cell Research?

Gazing at the California initiative proposed in Proposition 71, the Wisconsin Journal Times speculates that Wisconsin may fall behind. Now, this would be a reasonable fear in most US states. But Wisconsin? As Alta Charo acknowledges, "UW-Madison has strong adult and embryonic stem cell programs for now because all the federally allowed embryonic cell lines are at the university..." Finally, someone comes close to admitting that Wisconsin benefits enormously from the policy presided over by its former governor, HHS head Tommy Thompson. It is arguably a huge advantage, giving enormous intellectual property protection to the corporation started by Wisconsin's alumni association to hold (and collect fees for licensing) patents on the discoveries of James Thompson and colleagues at Wisconsin, and to collect fees for the use of Wisconsin's "Bush-approved" cell lines. Those patents, by the way, cover a huge range of activities in embryo engineering and science - virtually ensuring Wisconsin a place at the table in any embryonic stem cell-based IP dispute. So it is a surprise that Charo notes that Wisconsin "should be, by far, the single state everybody in the world looks to for the first, best discoveries on both embryonic and adult stem cells. And we're not."