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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (176957)	9/3/2001 4:26:54 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Jim Clark Shoots Himself in Foot, Withholds $60 million for Stem Cell Research news.bbc.co.uk Researchers can't get federal money for stem cell research, but can get private funds. Jimmy doesn't like that arrangement, so he... withdraws a total of $210 million in private funds to researchers. Mr. Clark, you are an idiot. ----------------------------------------------------------- Billionaire suspends stem cell donation By David Willis in California An American billionaire has suspended a $60m donation to a California university in protest at recent political restrictions on stem cell research and cloning. Jim Clark, the founder of internet companies such as Netscape and WebMD, said restrictions imposed on the research threatens to throw the United States into what he called the dark age of medical research. Mr Clark is one of the most influential people so far to join the debate. In the last few months the House of Representatives has agreed that the cloning of human embryos should be banned, and President George W Bush has announced limitations on the funding of embryonic stem cell research. The two measures have provoked considerable debate and the fall-out is clearly far from over. Future of medicine Anti-abortion activists want to stop stem cell research altogether, because a human embryo is destroyed to create a line of cells which are then cloned for research. But Mr Clark, a legend in Silicon Valley for his ability to spot trends in emerging technology, maintains that research using stem cells is vital to the future of medicine. Writing in The New York Times newspaper, he said it seemed that creating genetically compatible skin cells for burn victims, pancreas cells for diabetics, nerve cells for people with spinal cord injuries and other potential advantages would soon be illegal in the US. He accused the country's political leaders of ignorance and fear of the unknown. Mr Clark, who once taught at Stanford University, also announced that he had suspended the second part of a $150m grant to set up a bio-medical centre there because Congress and the president were thwarting part of that research by supporting such restrictions. The centre is already under construction and the president of Stanford University, John Hennessey, supported Mr Clark, saying that many scientists were concerned about the long-term impact of restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research.