More evidence of why taxpayers have become the investor-of-last-resort for the embryonic stem cell pipedream.
The Washington Post reports:
The company conducting the first government-approved tests in people of a therapy developed using human embryonic stem cells abruptly announced Monday that it was halting the study, stunning advocates of the highly contentious field.
Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, Calif., said the move, which stops one of the most controversial and closely watched medical experiments in the history of biomedical research, was the result of a business decision to focus exclusively on developing cancer therapies.
“In the current environment of capital scarcity and uncertain economic conditions, we intend to focus our resources on advancing our . . . two novel and promising oncology drug candidates,” John A. Scarlett, Geron’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “This would not be possible if we continue to fund the stem cell programs at the current levels.”
The company also announced that it was eliminating 66 full-time positions, representing 38 percent of its workforce.
Embryonic stem cell research, touted as holding the cures to every imaginable disease and health condition, is going nowhere fast. Private investors fled long ago, prompting the medical-industrial complex to push for ballot initiatives like in California to make taxpayers pay for embryonic stem cell alchemy. When not beset with outright fraud, taxpayers get outright failure.
For more on embryonic stem cells, check out the JunkScience.com Resource Library.
One company abandoning human embryonic stem cell therapy because it doesn’t look like it’s going to be as profitable as other business opportunities is hardly evidence that embryonic stem cell research is doomed to fail.
I also noted that you failed to mention that Geron repaid the taxpayer investment plus interest.
I am in no way affiliated with Geron Corp, nor am I a scientist. I also don’t advocate taxpayers footing the bill for sketchy science, but I think the money spent on stem cells is put to far better use than the money thrown at NASA.
Embryonic, as opposed to Self Stem cell research ,was always based on the phony R&D results by Dr.Suk of Korea.That was a scandal in the medical fields that ensnared a few US Noble prize Winners seeking to associate their names with the phony results, before they were discovered to be phony; and without having to do any R&D themselves.
Self Stem cell research has produced results and therapies which work and have the benefit of NOT being rejected by the Bodies own Immune system.
Emb bryonic stem Ceil research being phony ha produced little. But Planned Parenthood sees a political benefit in justifying their baby-killing and forces good little DemoRat apparatchicks to fund work in this area. The government is the only source of funding as normal philanthropic activities could never continue funding such stupidities.
Oh well. Leftist pseudo-Science has ever been thus. From Stalin’s Lysenko-ism, to Hitler’s Eugenic theories, to Embryonic stem cell research, to CAGW R&D, politically correct pseudo-Science prospers, among the Socialists, whatever the stripe, until well after its lies are exposed.
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