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and Ethics, Inc., a group opposing stem cell research, files a petition which would amend Florida’s state constitution to prohibit embryonic stem-cell research.November 2005:Gerald Schatten a former colleague of Hwang Woo-Suk now at the University of Pennsylvania, announces there were ethical irregularities in Hwang’s procurement of oocyte (egg) donations used in his research. Roh Sung-il, a close collaborator, announces at a press conference on November 21 that oocyte donors had been paid $1400 each for their eggs. On November 24, Hwang announces that he will resign from his post due to the scandal.December 16, 2005:New Jersey becomes the first state to allocate public funds for hESC research, as the State Commission on Science and Technology grants $5 million to 17 research projects, most located at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Rutgers University, and Princeton University.December 29, 2005:A Seoul National University investigation of the work of Hwang Woo-Suk concludes that all 11 stem cell lines claimed in his 2005 paper were fabricated.2006 (calendar year):Over 1100 articles on ESC research are published, a nearly 10-fold increase from 140 in 1997.January 11, 2006:Science retracts both of Hwang Woo-Suk’s papers due to scientific misconduct and fraud. On January 12, Hwang holds a press conference to apologize but does not take responsibility for the fraud claiming that members of his scientific team sabotaged his work.April 2006:Maryland allocates $15 million in state funding for ESC research, beginning in July 2006, through passage of the Stem Cell Research Act.May 12, 2006:South Korea indicts scientist Hwang Woo-Suk on charges of fraud, embezzlement, and bioethics violations. Three of his collaborators are also charged with fraud.June 21, 2006:Florida Governor Jeb Bush, speaking at the annual biotechnology Industry Organization meeting, announces his disapproval of hESC research. Bush further announces that no stem cell research will be performed at any Florida university, nor at the Scripps Research Institute in Palm Beach, Florida.July 2006:ES Cell International in Singapore becomes the first company to commercially produce hESCs which are suitable for clinical trials; vials of stems cells are offered for sale on the internet for $6,000.July 18, 2006:Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) publishes an editorial in the Washington Post announcing his support for federal funding of stem cell research, in opposition to President Bush’s policy. Frist also announces that he sees no contradiction between stem cell research and his pro-life beliefs.July 19, 2006:President Bush vetoes a bill, passed by the House in 2005 and the Senate in July 2006, which would expand federal funding for hESC research. August 2006:Working at Tokyo University, Shinya Yamanaka and Kazutoshi Takahashi create the first iPS cells (induced pluripotent stem cells) by introducing four genes into mouse skin cells; the resulting cells have properties similar to embryonic stem cells. In 2007, Yamanaka and Takahashi successfully produce iPS cells using human cells.August 23, 2006:Scientists from the private company Advanced Cell Technology announce they have developed a technique that allows them to remove a single cell from an embryo. The embryo is not harmed in the process and the cell can then be grown in the lab, circumventing ethical objections to hESC research which requires the destruction of embryos.November 7, 2006:Missouri voters pass Amendment 2, a constitutional amendment that states that any human embryonic stem cell research or treatment allowed by the federal government will also be allowed in Missouri. The narrow victory (51–49 percent) galvanizes opposition to the bill, much of which is centered on their contention that it would allow human cloning.November 28, 2006:In the wake of the Hwang Woo-Suk scandal, a panel led by John I. Brauman recommends changes in the procedures used to review papers submitted for publication in Science. The changes recommended include flagging high-visibility papers for further review, requiring authors to specify their individual contributions to a paper, and online publication of more of the raw data on which papers are based.2007:The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to Mario R. Capecchi, Sir Martin J. Evans, and Oliver Smithies, for their work on altering mouse embryonic stem cells.January 7, 2007:Dr. Anthony Atala of Wake Forest University and colleagues from Wake Forest and Harvard Universities report the discovery of amniotic–fluid-derived stem cells (AFS), which seem to hold similar promise to hESCs. The researchers reported that AFS could be extracted without harm to mother or child, thus avoiding some of the moral controversies regarding hESCs.February 28, 2007:Governor Chet Culver of Iowa signs the “Iowa Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative,” a bill which ensures that Iowa researchers will be allowed to conduct stem cell research and that Iowa patients will have access to stem cures and therapies. The bill also prohibits human cloning.March 11, 2007:An article in the Baltimore Sun newspaper reports that wording had been changed in a bill before the Maryland legislature, replacing the word “embryo” with “certain material,” in an effort to get the bill to pass.March 31, 2007:New York passes a budget for the Fiscal Year 2008 which includes an appropriation of $100 million for stem cell and regenerative medicine research. The funds will be distributed through the Empire State Stem Cell Trust, which will be funded at $50 million per year for ten years after the initial appropriation of $100 million.April 11, 2007:Richard K. Burt and colleagues report success in treating Type I diabetics in Brazil with stem cells taken from their own blood. The experimental procedure, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, has allowed the diabetics to stop taking insulin for as long as three years.May 30, 2007:California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Canada’s Premier of Ontario Dalton McGuinty announce an agreement between Canada’s International Regulome Consortium and the Stem Cell Center at the University of California-Berkeley to coordinate research. McGuinty also announced the creation of the Cancer Stem Cell Consortium, which will coordinate and fund cancer stem cell research, and announced an initial donation of $30 million Canadian from the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research to fund the consortium.June 6, 2007:Rudolf Jaenisch and colleagues at the Whitehead Institute, affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, announce in Nature that they have succeeded in manipulating mature mouse stem cells so they have the properties of ESCs. In the same issue of Nature, Shinya Yamanaka and colleagues at Kyoto University announce that they have developed a method to reprogram stem cells in mice back to the embryonic state, so they may then develop into different body cells similarly to hESCs. If this technique is adaptable to human cells, it would allow researchers to bypass most of the controversy involved with the use of hESCs which are derived from human embryos.June 20, 2007:President Bush vetoes legislation that would have allowed federally funding ESC research using cells from embryos from fertility clinics which would be destroyed anyway. At the same time, Bush issued an executive order encouraging federal support of research aimed at creating stem cells without destroying embryos.August 3, 2007:Kitai Kim, George G. Daley, and their colleagues at Children’s Hospital, Boston, report in the journal Cell Stem Cell that Hwang Woo-Suk, the discredited Korean researcher, did have one significant research result which appears to be genuine. The Children’s researchers determined that Hwang’s purposed ESCs were produced by parthenogenesis (virgin birth) from unfertilized eggs, a result since achieved by other researchers as well.November 6, 2007:New Jersey voters reject a ballot measure which would have allowed the state to borrow $450 million to fund stem cell research. Defeat of the initiative is attributed to the state’s worsening fiscal condition and a vocal alliance of conservatives, anti-abortion activists, and representatives of the Catholic church who oppose stem cell research.November 14, 2007:Shoukhrat Mitalipov and colleagues at the Oregon Health and Science University’s national Primate Research Center announce in Nature that they have successfully derived ESCs by reprogramming genetic material from the skin cells of rhesus macaque monkeys.November 20, 2007:The journals Cell and Science carry reports of discoveries by two independent teams of scientists which reprogram human skin cells to have the characteristics of hESCs. One team is led by Shinya Yamanaka, who reported success for the same procedure in mouse experiments in 2006; the other is led by James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.December 2007:Rudolf Jaenisch, working at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT, demonstrates that iPS cells could be reprogrammed to treat sickle cell disease in mice.2008:According to an April 2013 report by EuroStemCell, only 108 scientific publications regarding human embryonic stem cells were published in 2008; by 2012, this number increased to 1,071, a compounded growth rate of 77 percent.January
