A new study confirms a seemingly obvious assumption about human embryonic stem cell research: Countries with fewer restrictions on research outperform countries with more restrictions. But the picture may be more complex than that, according to some experts. The article, published linkurl:online;http://www.cellstemcell.com/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS1934590908002221 today (June 4) in Cell Stem Cell by linkurl:Aaron Levine;http://www.aarondlevine.net/ at the Georgia Institute of Technology, devised a metric to gauge the output of human embryonic stem cell (HESC) publications of 16 countries. Levine compared the number of HESC publications in each country with the number of RNAi publications -- for the study, RNAi publications acted as a type of control, representing an equally clinically relevant area of research, without the same controversy or discrepancies in policy as HESC research. Not surprisingly, "overperforming" countries including China, the United Kingdom, Israel, and Singapore, have historically permissive policies regarding HESC research, especially regarding the derivation of new stem cell lines....
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