Elena CattaneoItalian researcher Elena Cattaneo has written previously on this site about the lack of transparent, contestable funding for science in Italy.  A new book by Armando Massarenti, Staminalia: Le Cellule Etiche e i Nemici Della Ricerca (Staminalia: Ethical Cells and the Enemies Of Research), picks up on this issue - describing the political and ethical disputes surrounding stem cellⁱ research in Italy, and the way science has sometimes been misrepresented.  Cattaneo, reviewing this book in Nature, writes:

With a final debate and a vote on four submitted proposals to amend the 'Act ensuring the protection of embryos in connection with the importation and utilization of human embryonic stem cellsⁱ', the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) decided on the future of stem cell research in Germany on 11th April.