Editorial: Science departs for Singapore

Sunday, Aug. 27, 2006 | 7:27 a.m.

Some of America's top minds in the field of stem cell research are being lured to the unlikely biomedical boomtown of Singapore - due in large part to the Bush administration.

Brilliant American scientists who are fed up with political opposition to federal funding for stem cell research are quietly slipping away to the authoritarian city-state. Singapore may be known for caning criminals and strict laws that once included a chewing gum ban, but it also has built a reputation for liberal acceptance of human embryo stem cell research.

It may have been a new low for demoralized U.S. researchers last month when Bush defied Congress with his first veto in five years, blocking a bill that would have increased public funding for embryonic stem cell research. Bush won't budge in his stated moral opposition to what he considers the destruction of nascent life.

But many scientists believe the research, which relies on the use of embryos that would have been discarded anyway, holds dazzling potential to spawn new treatments for Parkinson's disease, diabetes, heart disease, even paralysis and an array of other maladies. A majority of Americans support the research, as do several prominent Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Nancy Reagan.

An announcement last week by a Massachusetts company that it had developed a method of harvesting a single cell from an eight-cell embryo without harming it - which potentially could defuse the political battle - was met with some skepticism and did not immediately quell the controversy.

Meanwhile Singapore has taken advantage of the hand-wringing by U.S. policymakers, seizing a lucrative economic opportunity.

In 2000 it launched an effort to become the stem cell research capital of the world. Singapore dangles tantalizing rewards for scientists in the form of less restrictive regulations and hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2004 Singapore opened a 2 million-square-foot biomedical campus called Biopolis, dedicated in part to stem cell research.

Singapore recruiter Philip Yeo has spent six years proudly snatching top researchers from prestigious U.S. institutions.

"I go to the U.S., and I tell those scientists, 'Come to Singapore and finish your work,' " he told Time Magazine.

The United States for decades has led the world in many areas of medical research. As a Time reporter noted, it was hard to visit the gleaming new Biopolis, with its U.S. researchers, and not wonder what America could have accomplished if it had chosen to the lead the way in stem cell research.

It's baffling that repressive Singapore, with its population of 4.4 million, has catapulted itself ahead of the United States in such a high-tech, high-finance world of cutting-edge science.

History may well record the Bush presidency as a dark moment in the history of medicine that unnecessarily prolonged the suffering of millions.