Stem Cells in Tissue Engineering Conference: Blog and Wiki

As I’ve mentioned before from tomorrow I will be at Sant Feliu de Guixols, Spain, at the Conference Stem Cells in Tissue Engineering, 28.10-2.11,2006 organized by the European Science Foundation. The official website of the conference is: http://www.esf.org/conferences/lc06213

In the IT sector it is more and more natural that a Conference has a wiki and different blogs, but things are a bit slower in the life sciences-biotech sector in that respect, although there is a huge development in the field. So I created a blog (WordPress of course) and a mini wiki for the Conference:
blog: http://stemcellconf.wordpress.com/
wiki: Stem_Cells_in_Tissue_Engineering_Symposium

These webtools are ideal for a better communication and information exchange in order to form a real scientific and social community during Conference time.

Rational Longevity: life extension as a project for critical thinkers

Anne Corwin, technological progressive from California wrote a nice philosophical essay, called What Is Meant By “Rational Longevity”, in which she delineates the territory of the new buzzword referring to clear critical principles:

What would happen if Bill Gates invested 3 billion dollars to embryonic stem cell research?

There is a dense comment debate on Bodyhack for more than a week concerning the electoral Missouri Stem Cell Hunter issue, celebs with ESC pro- or contra ads.
Here is an effective comment from today’s related post by the commenter named Orrin:

“I wonder what would happen if Bill Gates invested 2 billion dollars to embryonic stem cell research and just got people to shut up. I’m sure there would be those who accused him of murdering babies while others would say that is still isn’t enough money.“

Well, Bill Gates is now a full-time charity man, which makes him more attractive in the eyes of many people, comparing to the times when he was a chief technology officer or software architect at a company. It was in a William Gates III building, as I know from the the Google story, where the PageRank algorithm was born, for example. In the case of embryonic stem cell research, we do not really know the opinion of Mr. Gates, but I think this would be really a useful celeb opinion to know.

Interestingly the Gates Foundation has already put a little money, with 3 zero minus than 3 billion in embryonic research, but in China, not in the U.S.: Still, some billionaires have shied away from this science scrap. Bill Gates’ foundation, the largest in the world with $29 billion on hand, has put less than $2 million into research on human embryonic cells–at a lab at Peking University in China. Researchers there are implanting human cells in mice to look for better ways of making vaccines against aids and hepatitis C. A spokesperson for the Gates Foundation says the Peking researchers hit on the right idea; that the foundation hasn’t funded a single stem-cell test in the U.S., she adds, isn’t related to the anti-abortion fight.
So if Mr. Gates does agree with the purposes of embryonic stem cell research, than it is time to invest big bucks in it. Who knows, maybe this contribution could decide the debate in the U.S….