Harvard World Health News
Jan. 28th, 2005 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brdgt
Yet again, a great edition of The Harvard World Health News.
Rumors and Urban Legends are important historical tools. Dismissing them as conspiracy theories or the product of simple minds (as I have sadly seen too much) is dangerous. Rumors and Urban Legends reveal underlying tensions, distrust, and societal divisions. For example, the legacy of Tuskegee is still with us...
Study: Many Blacks Cite AIDS Conspiracy: Prevention Efforts Hurt, Activists Say
By Darryl Fears, Washington Post Staff Writer, January 25, 2005
More than 20 years after the AIDS epidemic arrived in the United States, a significant proportion of African Americans embrace the theory that government scientists created the disease to control or wipe out their communities, according to a study released today by Rand Corp. and Oregon State University.
That belief markedly hurts efforts to prevent the spread of the disease among black Americans, the study's authors and activists said. African Americans represent 13 percent of the U.S. population, according to Census Bureau figures, yet they account for 50 percent of new HIV infections in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nearly half of the 500 African Americans surveyed said that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is man-made. The study, which was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, appears in the Feb. 1 edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.
More than one-quarter said they believed that AIDS was produced in a government laboratory, and 12 percent believed it was created and spread by the CIA.
A slight majority said they believe that a cure for AIDS is being withheld from the poor. Forty-four percent said people who take the new medicines for HIV are government guinea pigs, and 15 percent said AIDS is a form of genocide against black people.
At the same time, 75 percent said they believe medical and public health agencies are working to stop the spread of AIDS in black communities. But the responses, which varied only slightly by age, gender, education and income level, alarmed the researchers.
"As a researcher knowing that these beliefs were out there, I wasn't as surprised as people I share the study with," said Laura Bogart, a behavioral scientist for the Rand Corp., who co-authored the study with Sheryl Thorburn, associate professor in the College of Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State.
"But the findings are striking, and a wake-up call to the prevention community," Bogart said. "The prevention community has not addressed conspiracy beliefs in the context of prevention. I think that a lot of people involved in prevention may not be from the community where they are trying to prevent HIV."
The findings were also no surprise to Na'im Akbar, a professor of psychology at Florida State University who specializes in African American behavior.
"This is not a bunch of crazy people running around saying they're out to get us," Akbar said. The belief "comes from the reality of 300 years of slavery and 100 years of post-slavery exploitation."
Akbar cited the Tuskegee experiment conducted by the federal government between 1932 and 1972. In it, scientists told black men they were being treated for syphilis but actually withheld treatment so they could study the course of the disease.
Today, he said, African Americans are more likely to live in communities near pollution sources, such as freeways and oil refineries, and far from health care centers. "There are a lot of indicators that our lives are not valued," Akbar said.
Phill Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles, said past discrimination is no longer an excuse for embracing conspiracies that allow HIV to fester.
"It's a huge barrier to HIV prevention in black communities," Wilson said. "There's an issue around conspiracy theory and urban myths. Thus we have an epidemic raging out of control, and African Americans are being disproportionately impacted in every single sense."
Black women made up 73 percent of new HIV cases among women in 2003, and black men represented 40 percent of new cases, according to the most recent federal figures available. Among gay men, blacks represented 30 percent of new infections, and adolescents ages 18 to 24 accounted for nearly 80 percent of new HIV cases.
"The whole notion of conspiracy theories and misinformation . . . removes personal responsibility," Wilson said. "If there is this boogeyman, people say, 'Why should I use condoms? Why should I use clean needles?' And if I'm an organization, 'Why should I bother with educating my folks?' The syphilis study was real, but it happened 40 years ago, and holding on to it is killing us."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Hmmmm.... Sounds eerily like Howard Dean's health plan?
Kerry proposes health coverage for all children
By Rick Klein, The Boston Globe, January 26, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Vowing to use his new ''national voice" in the wake of his presidential campaign, Senator John F. Kerry yesterday unveiled a sweeping plan to bring health coverage to all children, paid for by repealing recent tax cuts for the highest-income Americans.
Kerry's bill would make healthcare for children universal by encouraging states to expand coverage under Medicaid and its companion state-federal program, the State Children's Health Insurance Program. He would also give higher-income parents tax incentives to insure their own children.
''It's just unacceptable in our country that we have so many children -- millions of kids -- who are uninsured, they get no healthcare, some of them get learning disabilities for the lack of diagnosis of something as simple as an earache," Kerry said in an interview with the Globe. ''This has to be priority number one. It's a place to start."
Kerry said the bill fulfills a pledge he made on the campaign trail, where he vowed to make such legislation the first bill he'd file as president. He has signed up 300,000 ''citizen cosponsors," recruited via his campaign e-mail list. Kerry said he is planning to ''gin up energy" for his bill through speeches around the country.
He will have his work cut out for him: The bill is not expected to get a warm reception in the Republican-led Senate, although Kerry promised to reach across the aisle to Republicans members who favor expanded healthcare.
Offering a glimpse at how he plans to conduct himself in his return to the Senate, Kerry said in the interview that he will use his perch on the Senate's Finance Committee -- as well as the network of supporters from his presidential run -- to garner support for his priorities.
The Massachusetts Democrat said his experiences on the campaign trail reinforced many fundamental beliefs and left him ''energized" about the possibilities to effect change through Congress. He said he believes that despite his loss, a large majority of Americans agree that health coverage should be provided to all, and he feels he is well-positioned to push for it.
''I haven't had a place to work directly as I can now [through the Finance Committee], nor have I had sort of a national voice to be able to apply to it," Kerry said. ''I'm reinforced in what I felt beforehand, but it's much more passionate and real to me in the sense that you can't help but go out there and be touched by people's lives.
''You can't go out there for two years and be in people's living rooms -- and their restaurants and their barns and their VFW halls -- and have the kind of interaction that I've been privileged to have, and not come back energized and reinforced in what this is all about," he added. ''This is not politics. . . . A lot of people in this country are hurting."
Republicans are already expressing concerns about the bill, particularly given the current record budget deficit. The Bush administration is seeking ways to scale back Medicaid coverage to save money, and many states have slashed health-care programs to cope with their own budget crunches.
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said that while covering more children is popular in the Senate, budget pressures may make it difficult. But he said Kerry's higher profile following the presidential campaign is likely to help his cause.
''He obviously has an elevated reputation, and that matters around here," said McCain, who returned to the Senate after his own failed presidential run in 2000. ''It's going to increase his influence in the Senate."
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Kerry's Massachusetts colleague and a cosponsor on the health-care bill, said Kerry is poised to play a leadership role not just in foreign affairs but on major issues like Social Security, tax reform, and the budget deficit.
''He came back to the Senate ready to fight, and he's already leading on key issues," Kennedy said. ''I don't know anyone who's better situated to be a major figure in the Senate agenda."
Kerry's health-care plans drew derision from Bush and other Republicans on the campaign trail. The president mocked Kerry's calls for universal coverage as ''creeping toward Hillary-care," and warned that it would lead to rationing of health services and a lack of choice among doctors.
Kerry and his campaign dismissed such criticisms, noting that his plan for universal coverage relied on employer incentives and tax credits as well as an option to buy into the health program available to federal employees, and that it was not government-run healthcare.
Although Kerry said he plans to introduce a version of his broader plan later in the Senate term, he is initially seeking only to guarantee coverage for children.
''We've got to find a starting place to find a common ground," Kerry said.
Under current law, states are required to provide health insurance through Medicaid to children up to age 18 whose family incomes put them at or below the federal poverty line -- now, earning $15,670 annually for a family of three. The federal government picks up about 57 percent of the cost on average. (For children up to age 6, the family income limit is higher. And many states, including Massachusetts, also choose to insure older children who are above the poverty line.)
Kerry's plan would encourage states to cover children up to age 21 whose family incomes are too high for them to be currently eligible. The federal government would pay two-thirds of the costs of covering children in families with incomes of up to three times the poverty line.
As an additional incentive, those states also would receive full federal funding for Medicaid coverage for children in the state who are at or below the poverty line. For children from families at up to three times the poverty level, the states would have roughly two-thirds of their costs matched by the federal government.
Kerry said the increased federal aid would save states $10 billion annually, and predicted that all state governments would jump on board for the savings, providing coverage to 11 million children who are now uninsured. The expanded coverage would be paid for by rolling back the recent income tax cuts for those who make more than $350,000 a year, to pay for the bill's estimated cost of $22 billion per year.
The senator said he would reach out to his Republican colleagues. But if his bill is stalled by GOP leadership, he is promising to offer it as an amendment to other bills, to force his colleagues to vote on whether all children should get healthcare or the wealthiest taxpayers should keep recent tax cuts.
''I intend to really try to create a grass-roots effort, to help us push people here in the Senate and elsewhere," Kerry said.
Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Could foreign competition help end restrictions on US stem cell research?
China surges ahead in stem cell science:
Doctor from the far east, at the forefront of techniques to treat nerve damage, to discuss his work at DTI-organised conference in London
Heather Tomlinson and David Adam, The Guardian, January 24, 2005
When Jianhong Zhu treated a patient with a chopstick lodged in his brain, not an uncommon injury in the country, the culinary implement ultimately helped repair the damage it had caused.
Pulling out the offending object, the Harvard-trained doctor saw fresh brain tissue and decided to culture it in the laboratory and transplant it into the patient.
It was the start of a breakthrough in treating nerve damage and a sign that China is set to become the leader in the field of stem cell research, a field that could in the future help ailments as diverse as paralysis and incontinence.
Professor Jianhong has treated eight brain-damaged patients with their own cells and has reported remarkable results. The results were compared with brain-damaged patients with no open wounds - who cannot be treated this way because there is no easy way to get the brain cells - to demonstrate that implanting the stem cells increased the movement and response of patients.
The results are not published in any academic journal, which normally produces scepticism about such claims.
But his technique amazed British scientists who visited his lab last September, as part of a Department of Trade and Industry mission to learn about stem cell research in the far east.
In a report to be published today by the ministry, the science taking place in China, Singapore and South Korea is described as world-leading. "They are at, or approaching, the forefront of international stem cell research," stated the report.
Prof Jianhong will discuss his work, along with other Chinese and British scientists at a conference in London today organised by the DTI.
"During our 14-day visit to China, Singapore and South Korea, we encountered some of the best equipped laboratories, most industrious research teams, and most adventurous clinical programmes that any of us had ever experienced," wrote Jack Price of the Institute of Psychiatry, in the DTI report.
The analysis picked up on how Chinese scientists are keener to apply stem cell research to treating patients. A British company, ReNeuron, is one of the nearest to bringing the technique to stroke patients to treat paralysis, but trials are still about a year away.
Britain has been a leader in the area for years, with the US hampered by the Christian right's views on using stem cells from aborted foetuses. However certain states in the US, including California, New Jersey, Illinois and Wisconsin, have now pledged billions to the area in order to catch up.
In Britain scientists are worried that the funding could soon dry up, after the government committed £45m over three years in 2002. Lord Sainsbury, science minister at the DTI, said yesterday that Britain should be motivated to remain the leader in stem cell research by the progress in the East. "Providing funding for research remains at the top of our priorities," he said.
Stephen Minger, a leader in the field at King's College London, says that all Britain needs is a similar amount to the previous commitment from the government, and does not need to match California's $3bn (£1.6bn) grant to keep up. "Most of the money will go into building labs, it won't increase the quality of the work done," he said.
But scientific entrepreneurs such as Sir Christopher Evans and Sir Richard Sykes in Britain are worried enough to start up a "Stem Cell Foundation", a charitable fund to support academics and companies in the area that hopes to raise £100m for British stem cell research.
China has been supported by substantial grants from national and regional government, funding laboratories and luring Chinese scientists in Western labs with competitive salaries. It is now the world's third largest spender on research and development, behind the US and Japan.
Stem cell researchers in the US will reveal this week that the human embryonic cells available to most of them are contaminated and probably useless for medical treatments.
Ajit Varki, professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego, has found the cells lines are tainted with material from animal cells used to help grow them. The human body cannot make the animal molecule, called Neu5Gc, so will recognise the stem cells as foreign and trigger the immune system to attack any implanted in the body.
Prof Varki said: "The human embryonic stem cells remain contaminated by Neu5Gc even when grown in special culture conditions with commercially available serum replacements, apparently because these are also derived from animal products." The results will appear in the journal Nature Medicine.
Dr Minger said most stem cells in Britain would also be affected, but that scientists here always planned to derive new, purer, cell lines for clinical trials. US stem cell experts using government money do not have that luxury because President Bush has restricted research to existing cell lines.
Rumors and Urban Legends are important historical tools. Dismissing them as conspiracy theories or the product of simple minds (as I have sadly seen too much) is dangerous. Rumors and Urban Legends reveal underlying tensions, distrust, and societal divisions. For example, the legacy of Tuskegee is still with us...
Study: Many Blacks Cite AIDS Conspiracy: Prevention Efforts Hurt, Activists Say
By Darryl Fears, Washington Post Staff Writer, January 25, 2005
More than 20 years after the AIDS epidemic arrived in the United States, a significant proportion of African Americans embrace the theory that government scientists created the disease to control or wipe out their communities, according to a study released today by Rand Corp. and Oregon State University.
That belief markedly hurts efforts to prevent the spread of the disease among black Americans, the study's authors and activists said. African Americans represent 13 percent of the U.S. population, according to Census Bureau figures, yet they account for 50 percent of new HIV infections in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nearly half of the 500 African Americans surveyed said that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is man-made. The study, which was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, appears in the Feb. 1 edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.
More than one-quarter said they believed that AIDS was produced in a government laboratory, and 12 percent believed it was created and spread by the CIA.
A slight majority said they believe that a cure for AIDS is being withheld from the poor. Forty-four percent said people who take the new medicines for HIV are government guinea pigs, and 15 percent said AIDS is a form of genocide against black people.
At the same time, 75 percent said they believe medical and public health agencies are working to stop the spread of AIDS in black communities. But the responses, which varied only slightly by age, gender, education and income level, alarmed the researchers.
"As a researcher knowing that these beliefs were out there, I wasn't as surprised as people I share the study with," said Laura Bogart, a behavioral scientist for the Rand Corp., who co-authored the study with Sheryl Thorburn, associate professor in the College of Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State.
"But the findings are striking, and a wake-up call to the prevention community," Bogart said. "The prevention community has not addressed conspiracy beliefs in the context of prevention. I think that a lot of people involved in prevention may not be from the community where they are trying to prevent HIV."
The findings were also no surprise to Na'im Akbar, a professor of psychology at Florida State University who specializes in African American behavior.
"This is not a bunch of crazy people running around saying they're out to get us," Akbar said. The belief "comes from the reality of 300 years of slavery and 100 years of post-slavery exploitation."
Akbar cited the Tuskegee experiment conducted by the federal government between 1932 and 1972. In it, scientists told black men they were being treated for syphilis but actually withheld treatment so they could study the course of the disease.
Today, he said, African Americans are more likely to live in communities near pollution sources, such as freeways and oil refineries, and far from health care centers. "There are a lot of indicators that our lives are not valued," Akbar said.
Phill Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles, said past discrimination is no longer an excuse for embracing conspiracies that allow HIV to fester.
"It's a huge barrier to HIV prevention in black communities," Wilson said. "There's an issue around conspiracy theory and urban myths. Thus we have an epidemic raging out of control, and African Americans are being disproportionately impacted in every single sense."
Black women made up 73 percent of new HIV cases among women in 2003, and black men represented 40 percent of new cases, according to the most recent federal figures available. Among gay men, blacks represented 30 percent of new infections, and adolescents ages 18 to 24 accounted for nearly 80 percent of new HIV cases.
"The whole notion of conspiracy theories and misinformation . . . removes personal responsibility," Wilson said. "If there is this boogeyman, people say, 'Why should I use condoms? Why should I use clean needles?' And if I'm an organization, 'Why should I bother with educating my folks?' The syphilis study was real, but it happened 40 years ago, and holding on to it is killing us."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Hmmmm.... Sounds eerily like Howard Dean's health plan?
Kerry proposes health coverage for all children
By Rick Klein, The Boston Globe, January 26, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Vowing to use his new ''national voice" in the wake of his presidential campaign, Senator John F. Kerry yesterday unveiled a sweeping plan to bring health coverage to all children, paid for by repealing recent tax cuts for the highest-income Americans.
Kerry's bill would make healthcare for children universal by encouraging states to expand coverage under Medicaid and its companion state-federal program, the State Children's Health Insurance Program. He would also give higher-income parents tax incentives to insure their own children.
''It's just unacceptable in our country that we have so many children -- millions of kids -- who are uninsured, they get no healthcare, some of them get learning disabilities for the lack of diagnosis of something as simple as an earache," Kerry said in an interview with the Globe. ''This has to be priority number one. It's a place to start."
Kerry said the bill fulfills a pledge he made on the campaign trail, where he vowed to make such legislation the first bill he'd file as president. He has signed up 300,000 ''citizen cosponsors," recruited via his campaign e-mail list. Kerry said he is planning to ''gin up energy" for his bill through speeches around the country.
He will have his work cut out for him: The bill is not expected to get a warm reception in the Republican-led Senate, although Kerry promised to reach across the aisle to Republicans members who favor expanded healthcare.
Offering a glimpse at how he plans to conduct himself in his return to the Senate, Kerry said in the interview that he will use his perch on the Senate's Finance Committee -- as well as the network of supporters from his presidential run -- to garner support for his priorities.
The Massachusetts Democrat said his experiences on the campaign trail reinforced many fundamental beliefs and left him ''energized" about the possibilities to effect change through Congress. He said he believes that despite his loss, a large majority of Americans agree that health coverage should be provided to all, and he feels he is well-positioned to push for it.
''I haven't had a place to work directly as I can now [through the Finance Committee], nor have I had sort of a national voice to be able to apply to it," Kerry said. ''I'm reinforced in what I felt beforehand, but it's much more passionate and real to me in the sense that you can't help but go out there and be touched by people's lives.
''You can't go out there for two years and be in people's living rooms -- and their restaurants and their barns and their VFW halls -- and have the kind of interaction that I've been privileged to have, and not come back energized and reinforced in what this is all about," he added. ''This is not politics. . . . A lot of people in this country are hurting."
Republicans are already expressing concerns about the bill, particularly given the current record budget deficit. The Bush administration is seeking ways to scale back Medicaid coverage to save money, and many states have slashed health-care programs to cope with their own budget crunches.
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said that while covering more children is popular in the Senate, budget pressures may make it difficult. But he said Kerry's higher profile following the presidential campaign is likely to help his cause.
''He obviously has an elevated reputation, and that matters around here," said McCain, who returned to the Senate after his own failed presidential run in 2000. ''It's going to increase his influence in the Senate."
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Kerry's Massachusetts colleague and a cosponsor on the health-care bill, said Kerry is poised to play a leadership role not just in foreign affairs but on major issues like Social Security, tax reform, and the budget deficit.
''He came back to the Senate ready to fight, and he's already leading on key issues," Kennedy said. ''I don't know anyone who's better situated to be a major figure in the Senate agenda."
Kerry's health-care plans drew derision from Bush and other Republicans on the campaign trail. The president mocked Kerry's calls for universal coverage as ''creeping toward Hillary-care," and warned that it would lead to rationing of health services and a lack of choice among doctors.
Kerry and his campaign dismissed such criticisms, noting that his plan for universal coverage relied on employer incentives and tax credits as well as an option to buy into the health program available to federal employees, and that it was not government-run healthcare.
Although Kerry said he plans to introduce a version of his broader plan later in the Senate term, he is initially seeking only to guarantee coverage for children.
''We've got to find a starting place to find a common ground," Kerry said.
Under current law, states are required to provide health insurance through Medicaid to children up to age 18 whose family incomes put them at or below the federal poverty line -- now, earning $15,670 annually for a family of three. The federal government picks up about 57 percent of the cost on average. (For children up to age 6, the family income limit is higher. And many states, including Massachusetts, also choose to insure older children who are above the poverty line.)
Kerry's plan would encourage states to cover children up to age 21 whose family incomes are too high for them to be currently eligible. The federal government would pay two-thirds of the costs of covering children in families with incomes of up to three times the poverty line.
As an additional incentive, those states also would receive full federal funding for Medicaid coverage for children in the state who are at or below the poverty line. For children from families at up to three times the poverty level, the states would have roughly two-thirds of their costs matched by the federal government.
Kerry said the increased federal aid would save states $10 billion annually, and predicted that all state governments would jump on board for the savings, providing coverage to 11 million children who are now uninsured. The expanded coverage would be paid for by rolling back the recent income tax cuts for those who make more than $350,000 a year, to pay for the bill's estimated cost of $22 billion per year.
The senator said he would reach out to his Republican colleagues. But if his bill is stalled by GOP leadership, he is promising to offer it as an amendment to other bills, to force his colleagues to vote on whether all children should get healthcare or the wealthiest taxpayers should keep recent tax cuts.
''I intend to really try to create a grass-roots effort, to help us push people here in the Senate and elsewhere," Kerry said.
Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Could foreign competition help end restrictions on US stem cell research?
China surges ahead in stem cell science:
Doctor from the far east, at the forefront of techniques to treat nerve damage, to discuss his work at DTI-organised conference in London
Heather Tomlinson and David Adam, The Guardian, January 24, 2005
When Jianhong Zhu treated a patient with a chopstick lodged in his brain, not an uncommon injury in the country, the culinary implement ultimately helped repair the damage it had caused.
Pulling out the offending object, the Harvard-trained doctor saw fresh brain tissue and decided to culture it in the laboratory and transplant it into the patient.
It was the start of a breakthrough in treating nerve damage and a sign that China is set to become the leader in the field of stem cell research, a field that could in the future help ailments as diverse as paralysis and incontinence.
Professor Jianhong has treated eight brain-damaged patients with their own cells and has reported remarkable results. The results were compared with brain-damaged patients with no open wounds - who cannot be treated this way because there is no easy way to get the brain cells - to demonstrate that implanting the stem cells increased the movement and response of patients.
The results are not published in any academic journal, which normally produces scepticism about such claims.
But his technique amazed British scientists who visited his lab last September, as part of a Department of Trade and Industry mission to learn about stem cell research in the far east.
In a report to be published today by the ministry, the science taking place in China, Singapore and South Korea is described as world-leading. "They are at, or approaching, the forefront of international stem cell research," stated the report.
Prof Jianhong will discuss his work, along with other Chinese and British scientists at a conference in London today organised by the DTI.
"During our 14-day visit to China, Singapore and South Korea, we encountered some of the best equipped laboratories, most industrious research teams, and most adventurous clinical programmes that any of us had ever experienced," wrote Jack Price of the Institute of Psychiatry, in the DTI report.
The analysis picked up on how Chinese scientists are keener to apply stem cell research to treating patients. A British company, ReNeuron, is one of the nearest to bringing the technique to stroke patients to treat paralysis, but trials are still about a year away.
Britain has been a leader in the area for years, with the US hampered by the Christian right's views on using stem cells from aborted foetuses. However certain states in the US, including California, New Jersey, Illinois and Wisconsin, have now pledged billions to the area in order to catch up.
In Britain scientists are worried that the funding could soon dry up, after the government committed £45m over three years in 2002. Lord Sainsbury, science minister at the DTI, said yesterday that Britain should be motivated to remain the leader in stem cell research by the progress in the East. "Providing funding for research remains at the top of our priorities," he said.
Stephen Minger, a leader in the field at King's College London, says that all Britain needs is a similar amount to the previous commitment from the government, and does not need to match California's $3bn (£1.6bn) grant to keep up. "Most of the money will go into building labs, it won't increase the quality of the work done," he said.
But scientific entrepreneurs such as Sir Christopher Evans and Sir Richard Sykes in Britain are worried enough to start up a "Stem Cell Foundation", a charitable fund to support academics and companies in the area that hopes to raise £100m for British stem cell research.
China has been supported by substantial grants from national and regional government, funding laboratories and luring Chinese scientists in Western labs with competitive salaries. It is now the world's third largest spender on research and development, behind the US and Japan.
Stem cell researchers in the US will reveal this week that the human embryonic cells available to most of them are contaminated and probably useless for medical treatments.
Ajit Varki, professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego, has found the cells lines are tainted with material from animal cells used to help grow them. The human body cannot make the animal molecule, called Neu5Gc, so will recognise the stem cells as foreign and trigger the immune system to attack any implanted in the body.
Prof Varki said: "The human embryonic stem cells remain contaminated by Neu5Gc even when grown in special culture conditions with commercially available serum replacements, apparently because these are also derived from animal products." The results will appear in the journal Nature Medicine.
Dr Minger said most stem cells in Britain would also be affected, but that scientists here always planned to derive new, purer, cell lines for clinical trials. US stem cell experts using government money do not have that luxury because President Bush has restricted research to existing cell lines.
