"Peter Wiley" wrote
I have some sympathy with the arguments about cost of development since
the number of successes is so low. However the drug companies
collectively are very unethical organisations ..... Therefore my sympathy
is pretty limited.

"Unethical" is an undertatement. There currently is no "approved" cure for
diabetes so millions of people throughout the world each spend $100s per
month to stay alive. OTOH scientists can take a few of your cells, strip
out your DNA and inject it into, say, a frog egg stripped of its frog DNA,
and that cloned egg will divide into YOUR stem cells. That's a fact
(Remember Dolly the sheep?). Now if my stem cells were injected into my
pancreas they would say "Gee, we must be Vito's pancreas cells!" and begin
making insulin - and my diabetes would be cured. So why isn't that
happening? Because additional research is needed to get the proceedure
approved and who is going to pay for that? Not the drug companies! It'd cost
them $billions!! Maybe that's why Bush won't allow federal funding. Y'see
it takes PATIENT DNA to do the research and Bush only allows a dozen or so
"established strains" to be used. Or maybe it's because the good folks who
eat their god every sunday also think that every lump of stem cells is a
baby.