Fresh Comments and Ariff Bongso

Lawrence Ebert, David Hamilton and Karl Bergman have all filed comments on the "Snippets" and "WARF News" items below. Some of them involve a story by Terri Somers of the San Diego Union-Tribune that we should have mentioned earlier. She wrote about how Ariff Bongso of the National University of Singapore in 1994 became the first scientist to derive human stem cells from an embryo.

Her story said:

"In the process, he laid the foundation for a field that many people hope will lead to new therapies for diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson's and cancer – and that others oppose because it destroys embryos.

"'Bongso made the connection between his area of expertise, human embryology, and stem cells, and just went for it' said Jeanne Loring, a stem cell researcher at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla. 'That's how great scientific discoveries are made, for the sake of curiosity.'

"But Bongso never patented his work.

"For almost a decade, the fame and financial benefit of being the first to derive human embryonic stem cells has been heaped upon James Thomson and the University of Wisconsin."