Other countries have also rung up hefty bills since the 2008 financial crash, but are at a much later stage of development than China, which faces a middle-income trap as its cheap labour pool dries up.

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In the years immediately following the initial successes of IVF, the U.S. government established a requirement that any proposed research on human fertilization, embryos, or the later fetal stage of development must be reviewed by an ethics advisory board before federal funds could be used to support it.

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This more collaborative model is being applied to the high-risk innovative early stages of drug discovery, with companies taking on the highly expensive later stage development.

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