According to the White House official statement issued a couple hours ago on the budget deal approved last night (you can read it here), NIH was spared from being cut. If this is indeed correct, then NIH should remain at 2010 funding levels, which is about the best outcome any of us could have hoped …
Tomorrow the California Assembly Public Safety Committee will vote on AB 190, funding the Roman Reed Act. So action is needed today! If AB 190 passes, there will be roughly $11 million/year for spinal cord research coming from $3 for each reckless driving speeding ticket. If it doesn’t pass, there will be $0. This is …
Take action today to find a cure for paralysis tomorrow Read More »
For many of us in the biomedical research field, we have always wanted to be a professor and run our own research lab even if it meant the gauntlet of the dreaded academic job search. For some it is fair to say that that goal is really a passion, a dream. However, to achieve …
UPDATE: Judy Woodruff just posted an interesting piece on the budget battle for NIH. You can read it here. We have had a welcome surprise of late: conservatives are telling Republicans (yes, you read that right) not to cut the NIH budget. The federal government has been running on a string of continuing resolutions (CRs) …
Conservatives agree: proposed Republican budget cuts for NIH are mindless Read More »
What’s going on with legislation on ES cell research in Minnesota? I blogged before about how Oklahoma legislators were heading toward passing legislation that would make it a crime to do ES cell research. Unfortunately, that legislation just passed. As if that were not bad enough, now potentially life saving research in Minnesota is starting …
Opponents of ES cell research launch stealth attack in Minnesota Read More »
How are things looking for the stem cell field for Spring 2011? Issue One. Getting to the clinic. At this point, Geron and ACT have their FDA-approved clinical trials underway using derivatives of human embryonic stem cells. As expected no news has leaked out on how things are going and it may well be Fall …
I have an op-ed piece in today’s Sac Bee. You can read it here. In the piece I highlight the amazing promise that stem cell technology holds for treating our wounded soldiers on the battlefield. I focus on the life saving areas of stem cell derived blood, spinal cord injury treatments, orthopedic injuries, and burn …
When I was an eight-year-old kid, my older brother Dave was taking karate. I thought it was very cool. One day he came home from karate class and I asked him what they did that day. He said they were “learning to fall”. At the time I thought that was the dumbest thing I had …
Overall, not focusing just on ES cell research, who is the largest funding agency in the world for stem cell research? If you think about CIRM, funding stem cell grants just in California, versus NIH funding stem cell research across the country, who might you imagine would have provided more funding? I would have thought …
CIRM is the largest funder of overall stem cell research in the world Read More »
In it’s first five years in existence, CIRM has awarded almost $1.2 billion for stem cell research in the state of California in the form of just over 400 grants. To give you some perspective on that amount of research funding, let’s compare this CIRM funding to NIH funding for stem cell research across the …