Embargoes and Economics: the Birth of Biotechnology in Cuba

Extract

Is anything up-to-date in Fidel Castro’s Cuba? A quick look around this island nation of 11 million people says no. The Gap and McDonald’s are conspicuously absent, virtually every American car and truck is a 1940s or ’50s model, and at the Tropicana, Havana’s huge outdoor nightclub, everything except the prices recalls that era, too.

So can it be true that this time capsule of a country has an extensive commitment to biotechnology?

The answer—an emphatic yes—appears to be the result, albeit unintended, of the economic embargo the United States imposed on Cuba in October 1960 and has yet to lift. At least so a group of American journalists was told on a recent visit to the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (Spanish acronym CIGB). The center is a part of a complex of 38 life sciences facilities and support structures called the Western Scientific Pole in Havana. (Cuba has 14 scientific poles; this one is the most eminent.)