Is the synthetic stem cell Japan's greatest ever invention?

Well I think so...

Placed against the staggeringly impressive historical output of one of the world's most inventive   countries, the synthetic "ethical" human stem cell announced this morning does Japan proud. I mean, it really is right up there with the Walkman, the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Toto Washlet.

The Japanese stock market, say Goldman Sachs and others, is now historically cheap - perhaps cheaper than it has been for 33 years. It is developments like the synthetic stem cell that should scream that "buy" signal across the skies in vast, flaming letters. Sure - fill your boots with China if you like cheap factories and stories of a billion future consumers. But buy Japan because, for all of its undeniable dysfunction, it consistently changes the shape of the world with products that are smaller than your finger-nail. In this case, they might actually BE your fingernail.

This morning's headlines seemed to say it all: the wonderful Prof Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University has indeed found a way of generating human embryonic stem cells without resorting to the messy, controversial and red-tape-encased business of using human embryos. There is, in fact, much more going on behind the scenes. I interviewed him in July, and he promised at the time that it would only be a few months before the technique was perfected. He has been as good as his word and the world has today entered a new era. Where previously anyone wanting to use a stem cell for research would have had to take it from a human embryo. A simple skin cell and Prof Yamanaka's technique will now do the trick - and it would take a really single-minded brand of lunacy to object to that combination.

The pace of research on stem-cell based regenerative techniques and medicine should now quicken substantially - not just in Japan, but in a whole slew of countries where objections to the use of human stem cells have held things back.

It is a spectacularly pivotal breakthrough, and the world should be very, very happy. But what is so interesting is the motivation that has carried Prof Yamanaka through all this. Unsurprisingly, a lot of it has to do with fury at the Japanese government - the government that has destroyed the construction, consumer-lending and pachinko industries and is looking to obliterate investment trust sales, taxis and all visits by foreigners.

When I went to his tiny, cramped laboratory in the suburbs of Kyoto, I was instantly saddened. You somehow expect bleeding-edge genetic research (particularly in Japan) to be conducted in achingly modern facilities of the sort that feature in Resident Evil or House. Yamanaka's lab was on the fourth floor of a miserable, decaying hospital whose patients seemed to consist chiefly of whinging geriatrics.

I cannot over-state my admiration for this chap. He began by patiently running me through a layman's  account of the incredibly complex work he was doing. He spent perhaps an hour on this, and I kept twitching with guilt that I was robbing the world of 60 minutes use of his brain.

But why? I asked him. Why, in a country that has not banned the use of human embryos in stem-cell research, do you feel the need to devote quite so much energy to finding an ethical alternative? Would the precious time of Japan's leading genetic scientist not be better spent using available human embryonic stem cells for developing medicines?

Ethics, he said, were a big part of the story but not all of it: he has a strong personal distaste for the use of human embryos, a passionate belief that patient care trumps everything and a visceral loathing for the Japanese government. For a quiet genius, he became quite animated on the subject, launching a venomous attack on the "stupid" bureaucracy and the fact that every great Japanese scientific advance seems to provoke a soul-destroying entanglement with red tape. What he wants is for Japan's biotech industry to thrive on the world stage. In the realm of stem-cell research, Japan is dreadfully held back by the regulations and Yamanaka wanted to give companies across the country a competitive edge.

There were two terrible flaws with official Japanese attitudes to stem-cell research, he said. To illustrate the first, he pulled out a 500-page wodge of paper. This, he said, is what I have to fill out in triplicate every time the laboratory wants to use a single human embryonic stem cell for a single experiment. Then it takes a month to write and another month for the government to process, by which time a rival lab in the UK might have done the experiment a dozen times. "If this lab wanted to be competitive," he said, "I would have to get rid of one scientist and put two full-time paperwork administrators in their place."

The answer, he said, was to find a way of producing stem cells synthetically and giving labs like his around the world the chance to to what they should be doing - saving lives rather than civil servants' jobs.

His second attack was on the dangerous fickleness of Japan's Health Ministry - a fault that effectively forced hugely promising long-term scientific projects either to be squeezed uncomfortably into too short a space of time or abandoned due to lack of funding. The problem, said the Prof, was that the bureaucratic head of the ministry changed every three years or so. As each new chap comes in, he feels the need to stamp his influence on the direction of scientific research, and devises a new funding budget. This budget, said Yamanaka, is drawn-up on a non-scientific whim and consistently diverts money away from existing projects (no matter how successful or world-changing) and into new ones.  Basically, he said, if you can't complete your project in three years, forget it.

It is a remarkably sorry state for the scientific community of the world's second biggest economy  to be in. Prof Yamanaka  and the rest of the world are wildly fortunate that he secured funding for synthetic stem cells, but it is hard not to wonder what other astonishing inventions and discoveries have ended-up victims of a government that still, after all these years of peace and stability, is incapable of big-picture, joined-up thinking.

Comments

[Joe]

We need more people like Dr. Yamanaka in this world, bravo ! dr. Yamanaka.
"Truth has a quiet breast". W.Shakespeare

[virgin health banks]

Its good to see that somebody else is helping to spread the word! Any kind of information shared could lead to new developments so its ver reassuring to hear! Dont the possibilities seem endless!