Germany Doubling Stem Cell Funding
11/28/2007
It is being reported that Germany will be doubling their funding for stem cell research.
The current allocation of five million euros (7.4 million dollars) will be raised to to just under 10 million euros, Annette Schavan told the weekly Focus magazine in an interview.
"From now on we are going to double the annual funding total for adult cell recoding techniques, in order to push forward advances in this area," she said.
"Over the next few years Germany must be a motor in adult stem cell research so that we can expand on the results already obtained," she added.
This move by the German government to double funding for stem cell research has not come without its critics, with many people feeling that any research involving the use of stem cells is unethical and should not be federally funded.
Those critics should be a tad more open to the idea of stem cell research, as recent results have proven that stem cells can be extracted from human skin thus not from a live human or animal embryo.
"First, there has been a debate over the stem cells research," said Junying Yu, Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. "Because extraction of stem cells by the existing methods leads to destruction of embryos and closing of human embryos has also resulted in ethnical debate. If we can transform the human skin cells into stem cells, we avoid this type of debate. Second, if the cells from a patient can be reprogrammed into stem cells similar to embryonic stem cells made through the cloning techniques, tissue and or organs can be cultured and used for transplantation in the patient. Third, the stem cells made using our technique can be used to test and precisely predict the effect of drugs on the patients because of its unique genetic fingerprint.
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