No Week 7 Yet

I hate to call this "Week 7" since Gil basically rewrote his same article filled with inaccuracies and misleading statements from last week.

I am currently checking with John Carey by email to check his references on this little piece. So far, no answer back. I will post his response, if I ever get one. Interestingly, I have not been able to confirm the following figure in bold.

In a remarkable essay in the May 27 edition of BusinessWeek titled “The Stem-Cell Also-Ran: America,” John Carey notes that while the National Institutes of Health spent $24 million on embryonic stem-cell research last year, South Korea is estimated to be spending $100 million annually.


Getting there....

The FY 2004 budget for embryotic stem cell research?

$24.3 million.

However, according to this, the South Korean government provides $24.4 million in facility assistance for stem cell and related research (the facility where Hwang works -- the South Korean that made the breakthrough).

I also discovered that last year, the NIH funded $383 million for adult stem cell research. Those have lead to alot of promising cures and treatments.

However, this site says:

According to a South Korean scientist, Hwang's study is funded with less than $200,000 a year in largely government grants.

Hwang says that about $2 million in funds available to him this year is shared by 20 teams conducting various research projects under his supervision. South Korea's presidential adviser for information, science and technology Park Ky-young says that the cost was equivalent to about one hundredth of the funds that scientists in the United States work with on similar projects.

Still more funding needed?