For scientists, growing cells took so much work that they couldn't get much research done. So the selling of cells was really just for the sake of science, and there weren't a lot of profits.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In the early 1950s, during the near avalanche of discoveries, rediscoveries, and redefinitions of subcellular components made possible by electron microscopy, those prospecting in this newly opened field were faced with the problem of what to do with their newly acquired wealth.
The private sector can go forward, if it must, with destruction of embryos for questionable and ethically challenged science. But spend the people's money on proven blood cord, bone marrow, germ cell, and adult cell research.
Cell culture is a little like gardening. You sit and you look at cells, and then you see something and say, 'You know, that doesn't look right'.
Biology is greener and, at scale, should be incredibly cost-effective: The cost of goods sold should be little more than the sugar water needed to brew almost anything.
We can grow crops less expensively because molecular manufacturing technology is inherently low cost.
Pharmaceutical companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in new HIV/AIDS treatments not out of altruism but because they can make up those research costs in sales.
Gene therapy technology is much like computing technology. We had to build the super computer which cost $8 million in 1960. Now everyone has technologies that work predictably and at a cost the average person can afford.
That's the new way - with computers, computers, computers. That's the way we can have the cell survive and get some new information in high resolution. We started about five years ago and, today, I think we have reached the target.
I was driven completely by a desire to understand how cells worked.
The cell is a city of production centres, each part working away like mad, and it's co-ordinated. Six trillion cells in a body - you can't help but be moved.