The doyen of British IVF, Lord Robert Winston, told the Sunday Telegraph: "The trend is to get as many eggs as possible, but that may be counterproductive. From the research we've done, the main risk is that doing this produces chromosomal damage in at least half, if not 70 per cent, of eggs. New studies are needed to prove the drugs are causing the damage, but it is my strong suspicion that this is the case."

From now on, the chastened journal will give high-risk papers special scrutiny, perhaps requiring higher standards for primary data, a clearer description of the roles of authors, and a more thorough evaluation of digital images.

The editor of Science, Donald Kennedy, said that more robust safeguards were needed because scientific fraud was only going to grow worse: "the environment for science now presents increased incentives for the production of work that is intentionally misleading or distorted by self-interest". The reviewers pointed out that special care needed to be taken with papers dealing with climate change, human health, and particular issues in commercial biomedicine and nanotechnology because they could influence public policy or "contribute to personal or institutional financial gain".

Dr Kennedy's upbeat editorial said that his journal had been vindicated by the review -- it had followed normal protocols and had made "a substantially greater effort than for most papers to ensure that the science was sound". However, when read carefully, the carefully phrased letter from the reviewers gives a different impression. The Hwang fraud was not the first time that Science had been duped. The reviewers described its current procedures as "inadequate to deal with the problems of intentionally misleading work".

Teresa Gambaro told the House that she was a Catholic, but plans to support the bill because of her father, a victim of Parkinson's. "He pleads with me to help him," Ms Gambaro said tearily. "I can't look him in the eyes and say I won't be supporting this bill."

Sophie Mirabella, on the other hand, condemned the bill. Therapeutic cloning is a step in the wrong direction, a depraved practice reflecting nothing more than the turpitudes of modern scientific egos in their race to the bottom of the ethics ladder," she said.

Singer responded to the growing controversy amongst his erstwhile admirers with letters of clarification to British publications. In these he attempts to correct the mistaken impression that he believes that experimentation can never be justified. As a utilitarian, he contends that actions are justified by their consequences. Hence, if animal experiments could lead to immense benefits, they could be defensible, at least in theory.

However, he does not accept that humans are more worthy than animals, so the bar has to be set very high. His letter says: "a test for whether a proposed experiment on animals is justifiable is whether the experimenter would be prepared to carry out the experiment on human beings at a similar mental level - say, those born with irreversible brain damage."

Ms Fry-Revere holds up Missouri as a regulatory model. Last month voters gave embryo researchers a guarantee that their work could continue without political interference. A private foundation was able to commence work immediately with US$2 billion in funding from philanthropists Jim and Virginia Stowers. She also describes American IVF as a case study in the libertarian model of medical research. Because the field was so controversial, the federal government contributed nothing. Today, fertility treatment is, she claims, a $16 billion industry.

Recent studies have shown that drug companies are farming out jobs to American contract research groups or cheaper offshore companies. A survey of 186 top global companies with a combined R&D budget of US$76 billion found that by the end of 2007 China and India will account for 31% of global R&D staff, up from 19% in 2004. "Companies are increasingly looking abroad to spur innovation and build new markets. In today's competitive environment, business can't be held hostage by the 'not invented here' syndrome," says a spokesman for consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.