Communicating Hope: the Bridge between Science and the Future It Creates

Abstract

Stem cells and hope. For those who place their futures in the perpetuation of biomedical research, these two constructs—stem cells and hope—have become nearly synonymous. For the scientific community, the potential for their work to be the basis of hope seems all too obvious. Science has long been the very vehicle by which society tackles its most pressing and perplexing challenges. It was Vannevar Bush, the first US presidential science advisor and the intellectual powerhouse behind the National Science Foundation, who championed the role that science would need to play in addressing broad social, economic, and technological problems.