First things first, I believe that it’s normal and should be highly appreciated that criticism becomes the major voices from the west as China starts to get into their eyes. This will not last long, and this is why the nation should appreciate them more. But it seems quite not the case, critiques are much less than what I have expected, and China still have been incapable to pay enough attention and consideration to the critiques that have come out. For individuals like me, they have freedom to form their own points, based on “facts” they can collect from news. Sometimes however, it is the lack of factual information that set us into confusion.

In the Feb. 19 issue of Nature is this editorial titled Collective responsibilities¹, which provided invaluable opinions that can surely help China overcome its hurdle toward scientific independence. But it mentioned something I failed to find more information of:

The spread in China of unproven stem-cell therapies for conditions such as epilepsy and spinal cord injuries has left the nation’s health authorities concerned.

and,

The Chinese authorities, however, tend to have an aversion to congregations— especially those such as the Falun Gong, which they believe pose a threat to the country’s stability. So the Ministry of Civil Affairs keeps a tight hold on who is allowed to organize in any formal sense. As a result, China’s stem-cell hopefuls must go through the slow process of planning and applying to become a ‘level 2’ society.

According to my knowledge of English, the as a result implies a causal relationship.

So are there some scandals about the Chinese authority’s misconducts on the stem cell research community? Is there a Chinese stem cell organization once being pressed down by the Ministry of Civil Affairs? This is ironical that I who live in China have to ask people who are not about whether something did happened in China. But I assume you understand this. I have already tried Google.com, but with no success. So I am asking you to provide me more information about this issue. If you ever heard of such kind of news, please tell me. You can just tell me “yes there seem to be once when I heard that … but I forget the detail”…

Or, this is a piece of news that first comes out from an Editorial article, which I believe is not appropriate. Editorial should not serve for news breaking itself.

¹ Nature (2009). Collective responsibilities Nature, 457 (7232), 935-935 DOI: 10.1038/457935a