Embryonic Stem Cell Research

[timmypowg]

Question: if American laws are bad for embryonic stem cell research, why don't scientists in other countries pick up the slack and/or why don't we hear about it if they do?

Comments

[novalis]

They do, but (a) in a number of countries, stem cell research is illegal or was illegal until fairly recently, and (b) Americans don't like to hear about anything that threatens their self-image.

one example

[little_e_]

Part of it is probably that America is the biggest 1st world nation (I am groggy from sleep dep so I can't guarantee my stats today), so there are a lot more researchers here than in, say, England. And I get the impression that different countries have different foci in the R & D--for example, the US has done more of the basic research in space and technology, while the Japanese have done more of the refining research, so we sent a man to the moon and they have superior cell phones. Even though the Japanese are very smart and do lots of research, they've won fewer Nobel prizes because it's more applied.

Also, research is just slow and it'll probably take a while for anyone to do anything really noteworthy.