Andart

Programmers to India and Stem Cells to Sweden?

From Reason: ABCNEWS.com : Pentagon Bankrolls Swedish Stem Cell Study

Very cute. Outsourcing of officially unethical research? (some papers from the Brundin lab)

Of course, Pentagon and other US agencies have always funded some research outside the US, this project is not truly unique. But it brings up some interesting things by the controversial nature of the research.

The fear/hope that bans on research would make researchers move to less restrictive countries have in most cases not been borne out. Usually it is because less restrictive countries are less appealing to do research in: Haiti probably has very loose laws of biomedical experimentation, but the lab facilities and general environment does not attract many people. Even fairly well developed places like Russia have a hard time attracting researchers and research capital. It is very much in line with Richard Florida's model of creative clusters, with the added effect that moving a research career is hard and expensive.

But stem cell research is interesting in that the regulatory climate is so clearly different in different nations, making it possible to find research clusters that are able to do the research both practically and legally.

My prediction is that as more and more of the emerging economies outside "the old west" appears we are going to see less and less of a bioethical consensus. This is going to produce more cases of this kind of outsourcing. The key is the existence of independent clusters with talent, technology and tolerance (for that particular issue, at least).

This is one reason why I hope we never get a more homogeneous world culture: there will always be a place for the heretics (and hereticorps) to go. With faster global communications, we better start producing more divergent culture too.