Barbara, I do not know what's holding the UK government from putting a real focus and national effort behind finding stem cell treatments.
For instance in Israel there is the political will and the government there has driven for the establishment of a Stem Cell consortium. No imagine if key countries in Europe, together with the US, Japan, China and Australia teamed up and with government assistance with measures to lessen red tape, easier sharing of information between research labs and a view to make all these research labs involved into one large international lab.
We are talking here of one of the best chances in history to eradicate some very nasty diseases and conditions which true on one hand means a bigger pension bill but on the other the strain of the health service will be greatly reduced.
The hypocracy in all this is deeper than we even think. For example, the UK biggest export industry in tobacco! The government spends millions in campaigns to allegedly stop people smoking. However it is not in the government's interest for people to stop smoking! Why so? It is so because the value of UK sales for all the tobacco products listed above amounted to ?12.1 billion.
Now the government makes an even bigger profit on the back of smokers! Cigarette taxation in the UK is the highest in the world, making cigarettes, on average, more than twice as expensive as elsewhere. As I mentioned already people in the UK spend about ?12 billion pounds on cigarette products of which nearly ?10 billion is tax.
With this in mind, is the government really going to actively seek the reduction of the number of people smoking when this will mean a reduction in the ?10 billion tax income for the government.
On the other hand, stem cell treatment of cancer in this example might mean that people will smoke more than ever before because there is a cure?