San Diego Voice: Don't Tar California Stem Cell Effort

From San Diego, one of the hotbeds for stem cell research, comes an appeal to the public to not paint California's efforts with a Korean brush.

The pitch was made by Elie A. Shneour, president of Biosystems Institutes, Inc. and research director of Biosystems Research Institute of San Diego

Writing in the Voice of San Diego, an online news outlet in that area, he said,

"California in general, and San Diego in particular are directly affected by the fallouts of this debacle. It has to do with damage to the credibility of the stem cell enterprise, and the trust of the public in the funding of scientific research. But it should not be."

He continued:

"What happened in South Korea unjustifiably reverberates in California, but it should not create one more unmerited impediment to an already charged situation."

Shneour went on to praise the work of the agency and said:

"Unfortunately, this grand project is now mired in legal conflicts generated by politically and religiously motivated antagonism that mirrors the resistance of Washington to stem cell research."

"Disappointingly, California, a state that has always been at the forefront of progress, is allowing the uninformed and the fearful to deny it the opportunity to take one of the first steps."

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