Steve,

from this and other posts, you appear to be across the science stuff (cf moral pronunciations of Dr Van Gend or commercial issues espoused by IVF proponents) so, can you quantify:

What amount of $ and manhours has been spent in Singapore and what research outcomes have come about?

Does it reflect a decent ROI (return on investment)? What prospects are likely in the next 4 years, decade or so?

I look forward to a real quantative & qualitive scientific response to this, otherwise the 'scientific promises' remain as much the 'snake oil' that you paint Dr Van Gend's moral interpretation as.

'check

I do not look at research as being a ROI. If this is the case no diseases will ever be cured, all research would be into maintaining chronic disease with ever more expensive drugs.

If there is a chance, however small some may think that is, of permanently curing only one disease with hESC I would ask can we afford not to do this research.

My interest is personal as my adult haematopoietic stem cells are cancerous (leukeamia) and treatment related mortality is still around 50% (getting lower due to research).

Moral and ethical arguements against hESC research are absurd if they do not also ban IVF, where embryos are created, frozen then thrown away as medical waste