The Hill announced this morning that Tommy Thompson (ex-HHS chief and current GOP Senate candidate) will address the same Vatican stem cell conference where Dr. Centeno has been asked to present stem cell, knee arthritis data.
Tommy Thompson to address stem cell conference at Vatican
Wisconsin GOP Senate candidate Tommy Thompson is addressing an unprecedented conference of scientific and religious leaders next month at the Vatican on the topic of stem cell research.
Thompson, a former governor of Wisconsin, is running for the seat vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl. If he survives primary challenges from two more conservative candidates — former Rep. Mark Neumann and Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald — he’ll face Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin.
The three-day event seeks to build support for stem cell studies that don’t require the controversial destruction of human embryos. The Vatican is putting on the conference in collaboration with New York-based NeoStem, a world leader in adult stem cell research.
“This is the first attempt to translate this high, sophisticated knowledge for the wide public,” the Rev. Tomasz Trafny, the head of the Science and Faith Department at the Pontifical Council for Culture, told The Hill during a visit to Washington to help plan the conference. “The revolutionary part of this [conference] is that we entered this collaboration because we consider that united forces can really have a bigger impact. We need to present issues, topics, together with scientists.”
