Word: cigb
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...Both the Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology Center (known by its Spanish initials CIGB) and the Finlay Institute are part of a massive biomedical complex on Havana's west side known as the "Scientific Pole." The CIGB alone takes up some more than 120,000 square feet, mostly full of gray, monolithic Soviet-era buildings, but laid out in a campus style reminiscent of U.S. software firms. Some of the hemisphere's most advanced research in pharmaceuticals, immunology, mammal cell genetics, plant molecular biology and even plant cloning and transgenic experimentation is conducted at the CIGB. The buildings are crammed with state...
...Cuba watchers agree that even Castro - a frustrated scientist who committed his communist revolution as much to medical research as sports prowess when he consolidated his power in the 1960s - probably wouldn't be foolish enough to compromise the credibility of labs like the CIGB and Finlay by allowing bio-weaponry to be produced in them. That doesn't mean, of course, that such research and production couldn't be going on. Cuba's advanced biological and chemical research capacity has long given the international community pause, especially after bioterrorism became such a broad concern after Sept. 11. "Cuba...
...came just a week before Carter's visit, is simply a means of appeasing anti-Castro Cuban-Americans whose votes carry weight for Bush - especially for his brother Jeb, who needs them to win a second term as Florida governor this year. Carter, at Castro's invitation, inspected the CIGB this week - and today, Castro invited any "neutral and impartial" inspector from any country to do the same...
...charges countries like India as little as $2 a shot. But the "special period"--as Cubans euphemistically refer to the economic crisis that followed the Soviet withdrawal--has redrawn these priorities, and Cuba's biotechnicians are entertaining larger ambitions. "We have the technology," declares Julio Delgado, who heads CIGB's industrial-enzyme program. "Now we're looking for partners with money...
...lifting of the U.S. embargo more eagerly than Cuban scientists, who struggle to obtain basic supplies--chemical reagents, for instance--that in the U.S. are but a phone call away, and whose incomes are starting to trail behind those of service workers buoyed by Cuba's rising tourist trade. CIGB has reportedly started paying its scientists partly in dollars to keep them from leaving the field. "I love my research," confides a hardworking scientist. "But if I have to drive a taxi to support my family, I will...