FDA OKs Stem Cell Trials, but is Obama going to put his money where his mouth is?

We were all very pleased to hear that recently FDA sent the clearance to a Californian bio-tech company to begin trials for the world’s first (official!) clinical study on stem cell based therapy. Clinical studies will be initiated with up to 10 paralyzed patients due to spinal cord injury. 

Coincidentally, rumors say that Obama plans to reinitiate human embryonic stem cell research which has been frozen since the Bush administration. Right now, as in many countries, using an human embryonic cell line  derived after august 9 2001, is banned in the U.S. Obama and his key scientific advisers are better concerned about the contemporary challenges than I thought in the beginning, showing the green light to reverse Bush doctrine.

This is inextricably linked to the pro-medical staff he had taken on in his administration; White House Chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel’s brother, Zeke (Ezekiel) Emanuel is a leading oncologist and director of the NIH’s (National Institute of Health) Bioethics department and a known pro-stem cell research medical interventionist.

However, this might not be sufficient to boost biotech research in America which is in the middle of a big (economic) crisis. When people are massively forced to abandon their homes lose their jobs and see their pension savings evaporate like snow to the sun, high cost lab work might seem like a luxury. Not surprisingly, budget cuts are expected and ‘less-efficient’ or ‘lower-impact’ (read: fundamental) research groups and facilities are likely to suffer most.

For all the praise and hardships this freshly formed government has already been exposed to, we are proponents of a don’t touch approach to government scientific research funding that secures the way to economic growth and to fuel novel breakthroughs in the combating of socially disastrous diseases that cost society billions of dollars in health care or indirect economic impact all around the world.