Fallout from the corruption of secular science by the Bush administration and its religious allies continues to pile up. The latest is a particularly harmful blow: Two of the world's best geneticists will leave the National Cancer Institute and move not to Stanford University, which had heavily recruited them, but to Singapore's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology. The reason is simple: They will face far fewer restrictions on their research, which involves stem cells.

Neal Copeland and Nancy Jenkins are a husband-wife research team. They are famous for developing methods that identify cancer-causing genes, work completed during their three decades at the Cancer Institute. Their ultimate goal is to develop drugs to block those genes; in effect, they seek a cure for cancer. They're leaving the institute because of restrictions on the use of stem cells imposed by the Bush administration. They had hoped to move to Stanford to take advantage of the $3 billion fund California voters approved for stem-cell research that circumvents the federal restrictions. Unfortunately, lawsuits by antiabortion groups have held up use of those funds. Thus the move to Singapore, where they will join geneticist Edison Liu, also formerly of the Cancer Institute.

The United States is accustomed to being the beneficiary of brain drains, but in the biological sciences that has now been reversed because of the unreasonable restrictions imposed on the use of embryonic stem cells for research. The irony in this is staggering: To prevent researchers from using surplus embryos from fertility clinics -- already slated for destruction -- opponents will forgo willingly the promise of cures for cancers and assorted other diseases that afflict millions of human beings. There are ethical considerations in this research, but they can easily be answered, if opponents were willing to engage in a dialogue. But they're not; despite their self-identification as "prolife," they'd rather see the stem cells in surplus embryos killed than kept alive and used in scientific research that might help heal people in the future.

© 2005 Star Tribune