A potential investor once asked that Carson not work with fetal tissue or any company that did. The investor walked. Another sensitive area in biotech is the fertility business. The institute did not respond to repeated inquiries from Virginia Business, but it recently told Time magazine that it can give couples an 85 percent chance of having a girl and a 65 percent chance of having a boy. Despite the ethical and financial challenges, the biotech industry is growing quickly in Virginia.
Exciting developments are under way, and many more are in the works.
Here are 10 breakthroughs that could put Virginia on the biotech map. In the early 1980s at U.Va. There will be a much bigger market, he predicts, for SpermCheck II, which is designed to help infertile couples. In the United States alone, between 3 million and 6 million couples suffer infertility problems each year. In many cases only women are tested, says Herr, but men are at least part of the problem in half of all cases.