...the Vatican recently signed a $1-million compact with [Dr. Robin] Smith's New York company, NeoStem, to collaborate on adult stem cell education and research.
The partners will hold a conference in Rome in November that is expected to attract some of the world's leading experts on adult stem cells, the less controversial cousins of embryonic stem cells.
Smith, who was in Southern California recently for a stem cell conference in Pasadena, was quick to emphasize that the Vatican is not investing in her company, which is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Most of the collaboration will involve a nonprofit company established by NeoStem, the Stem for Life Foundation, she said. The Vatican's role will include fundraising, launching educational campaigns, contributing to research and sponsoring the Rome conference, Smith said.
The partnership is rare, perhaps unprecedented. "It is unusual, " said Father Tomasz Trafny, the Vatican's point man on the deal. "Never in history [have] we entered into such [a] collaboration."
Trafny, a Polish-born priest who heads a science and theology unit within the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the church decided to collaborate with NeoStem for two reasons.
"First, they have a strong interest in … searching for the cultural impact of their own work, which is very unusual," he said. "Many companies will look at the profit and only at the profit.
"And the second, of course, is that they share the same moral, ethical sensitivity.... Because of that ethical position, we entered into this unique collaboration."
