Wish I could say this news saddens me, but I can’t! How long before Robert Klein and the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine have their cup out for a bail-out?!
“The global financial crisis may do what opponents of California’s $3 billion state-sponsored stem cell research experiment could not: dry up funding.”
Of course there is already movement within the scientific establishment to get the federal government to bail them out. See this:
Scientists Seeking Stimuli
A collection of U.S. research universities is making the case for science to be included in legislation aimed at reviving the moribund economy.
In a letter today to President-elect Barack Obama, the 62-member Association of American Universities proposes $2.7 billion in immediate spending on academic buildings, scientific equipment, and young researchers. AAU joins a long line of interest groups hoping to tap into an economic stimulus package topping $500 billion in emergency spending that will be taken up next month by Congress and the incoming administration. Several higher education groups are also making a pitch to make college more affordable, arguing that a better-trained workforce will help the country climb out of the recession sooner.
And this one too on where is the Biomed Bail-out!
“Consider the budget for the National Institutes of Health, the primary source of funding for U.S. biomedical researchers. It, too, has recently had the rug pulled out from under it. And while the negative impacts may not be as obvious or immediate as the fallout from the housing, credit and stock market crises, the repercussions of this pound-foolish parsimony promise to be massive.”
Cry me a river!
Author Profile

- Jennifer Lahl, MA, BSN, RN, is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl couples her 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, a hospital administrator, and a senior-level nursing manager with a deep passion to speak for those who have no voice. Lahl’s writings have appeared in various publications including Cambridge University Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, and the American Journal of Bioethics. As a field expert, she is routinely interviewed on radio and television including ABC, CBS, PBS, and NPR. She is also called upon to speak alongside lawmakers and members of the scientific community, even being invited to speak to members of the European Parliament in Brussels to address issues of egg trafficking; she has three times addressed the United Nations during the Commission on the Status of Women on egg and womb trafficking.