conservate On the way up: Conservative leader Stephen Harper Conservatives win Canadian Mark Findlay Canada's recent general elecfion was called because the minority Liberal Government (lead by Paul Martin and supported by the social democratic NDP) was brought down by the Conservatives, NDP and Bloc Quebecois.
The ostensible reason was the recent corruption scandal involving the Liberal Party in Quebec and some advertising
The result was a big defeat for the Liberals, the traditional governing party, who have pursued neo-liberal policies since they were elected in 1993; carrying out The NDP massive cuts in made no public services, tax cuts for the rich and impression at Conservatives, but allowing the creep- all in Quebec, ing privatisation of and its vote
However, while and count of the Conservatives seats were became the largest party, the NDP also well short of increased its share its best of the vote. In
showing of 43 Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois lost some ground to the Conservatives, but the Liberals were squeezed.
The effect was that the Conservatives, lead by Stephen Harper, now form a minority government, which must seek allies to push any of its program through the federal parThe NDP, critically supported outside of Quebec by many socialists gained some 10 seats from the 2004 result, mostly in the far-west province of British Columbia.
It made no impression at all in Quebec, and its vote and count of seats were well short of its best showing of 43 seats and 20.4% in 1988. It has moved to the right, effectively supporting the Liberal cuts budget and abandoned its position of aiming for government.
Effectively the NDP works as a pressure group, mostly on the Liberals, with Parliament. It has already decided to "let parliament work" and allow the Conservatives to govern.
In Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois (BQ) (essentially the
Parti Quebecois (PQ) under an different name) largely held its ground. It lost seats to the voters punished the Liberals severely, with some going to the BQ and others to the Conservatives. The PQ in power has had its own reactionary policies and in practice is unable to completely break from the Canadian seats in 1988 state, because of
dependence on Federal finance and the essential desire of the Canadian bourgeoisie to remain united.
It is a thoroughly bourgeois right wing formation with nasty reactionary attitudes to immigrants and First Nations.
However it continues to win support including in the social movements and trade unions by wrapping its neoliberalism in soft social democratic and populist rhetoric. Ken Glanfield Hwang Woo-suk was regarded as a scientific hero in South Korea for making two huge breakthroughs in stem cell science, breakthroughs that held the promise of revolutionising therapeutic cloning and a Nobel Prize.
He was to be the subject of 16 books that now reside in history's dustbin, and named Scientific American's Research Leader of the Year' for 2005.
In 2004 he claimed to have created the first human embryonic stem cell [ESC] line from a cloned human embryo and followed this up a year later with claims to have made 11 patient specific ESC lines cloned from adult skin cells taken from patients suffering a variety of illnesses.
This promised to lead to the 'holy grail' of therapeutic cloning, stem cells that would be genetically matched to the patient removing the threat of rejection by the immune system
Moreover each ESC line required on average only 17 human egg cells; researchers elsewhere failed to develop one ESC line from 200 cells. Many researchers, wide, switched their approach in consequence.
Stem cells serve as a biological 'repair system, with the potential to develop into many different specialised cells. Theoretically they can divide without limit and in this process remain a stem cell or specialise to become a •rain. Dioo• or muscle cel etc, depending upon which bio-chemical signals are present. differentiation is crucial to understanding both normal and abnormal human development and to the development of new therapies for the Alzheimer's disease, motor neurone disease, and the production of beta cells that produce insulin for diabetics.
This not new, bone marrow transplants that rely upon stem ceus treat leukaemia and other blood disorders have been used for decades.
Therapeutic cloning is contentious because it uses the repses as uch divines the therapies derived from them. Hwang Woo-suk just could not replicate his research findings same technique that produced Dolly and Snuppy, and which the Raillean Cult used when clalming to nave cloned a human being in 2004.
A cell is taken from a week old embryo, often no longer required for IVF; the nucleus conlalling the genes removed and replaced with the nucleus taken from an adult cell. The cloned cell is stimulated to replicate, as if it had been fertilised.
Whilst still a blastocyst, a ball of 100 cells, and undifferentiated the stem cells are harvested and the budding embryo destroyed. In reproductive cloning the cells baby.
Hwang, like the Railleans, in the university sector. never succeeded. He falsified Controlling this process of So why the fuss? Money - big money. Money for research; money for patents possibly claiming ownership of ESCs; money from licences and patent the technique. ESC would still have been problems to overcome. big money. Money for research; money for patents
possibly claiming ownership of ESCs; money from licences and the therapies derived from them. Just as the Human Genome Project gave birth to private genetics companies seeking to exploit and own its findings -so companies have been established seeking to exploit ESC research. In South Korea therapeutic cloning is legal, as it is in the UK, and financed to the tune of $80m, largely privately, of which Hwang's team received almost a third, some of this money finding its way into 'pockets'. The situation in the UK is would continue to develop different; the majority of the into an embryo and possibly a research is publicly funded,
whilst also being conducted However, there are huge his team's results but did pressures on researchers to
seek private funding and partHad Wang succeeded real- nerships with all that throws So why the fuss? Money - medical fields. Capital as ever
fetishises and distorts all it touches.