Tuesday, September 12, 2006
ACT Debacle Turning into Another Stem Cell Hoax
Michael Fumento from the Hudson Institute had this great piece on LifeSite about the ongoing fiasco at Advanced Cell Technology over their "ethical" embryonic stem cell "breakthrough":
The fierce public debate over killing human embryos to create lines of embryonic stem cells is over; tout fini; the end. It was buried with a stake thrust through its heart by a study published in the world's most prestigious science magazine, Nature. Trust the media:
• “Stem Cells Created With No Harm to Human Embryos” (Washington Post)
• “In New Method for Stem Cells, Viable Embryos” (New York Times)
• “Embryos Spared in Stem Cell Creation” (USA Today)
• “Stem Cell Advance Spares Embryos” (L.A. Times)
On second thought, don't trust the media.
In fact none of the 16 embryos involved in the study by medical director Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) survived. All were harmed; none were viable; none were spared. When a member of ACT’s research advisory panel, Ronald Green, told the Washington Post “You can honestly say this cell line is from an embryo that was in no way harmed or destroyed,” he couldn't have been more dishonest.
For all the media mania, you'd never know the Lanza publication was just a 200-word letter that spent as much verbiage on theory as on actually describing the experiment. As such, Nature had no business running it.
But as I've written elsewhere, Nature has long boosted embryonic stem cell (ESC) technology generally and the lifting of federal funding restrictions specifically, as has its American counterpart Science. Their eagerness to run anything promoting this view recently led to Science being forced to withdraw not one but two “ESC miracle breakthrough” articles.
The rest of the article is very enlightening and worth the time to read. Wesley Smith is a big fan of Michael Fumento's and it's easy to see why.
There is a distinct pattern emerging, which is that ESCR is a racket. Taxpayers and other investors are the marks. And there is a lot of money at stake. The really sad thing is that all of this money could be spent to develop real adult stem cell cures to benefit real people.
The fierce public debate over killing human embryos to create lines of embryonic stem cells is over; tout fini; the end. It was buried with a stake thrust through its heart by a study published in the world's most prestigious science magazine, Nature. Trust the media:
• “Stem Cells Created With No Harm to Human Embryos” (Washington Post)
• “In New Method for Stem Cells, Viable Embryos” (New York Times)
• “Embryos Spared in Stem Cell Creation” (USA Today)
• “Stem Cell Advance Spares Embryos” (L.A. Times)
On second thought, don't trust the media.
In fact none of the 16 embryos involved in the study by medical director Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) survived. All were harmed; none were viable; none were spared. When a member of ACT’s research advisory panel, Ronald Green, told the Washington Post “You can honestly say this cell line is from an embryo that was in no way harmed or destroyed,” he couldn't have been more dishonest.
For all the media mania, you'd never know the Lanza publication was just a 200-word letter that spent as much verbiage on theory as on actually describing the experiment. As such, Nature had no business running it.
But as I've written elsewhere, Nature has long boosted embryonic stem cell (ESC) technology generally and the lifting of federal funding restrictions specifically, as has its American counterpart Science. Their eagerness to run anything promoting this view recently led to Science being forced to withdraw not one but two “ESC miracle breakthrough” articles.
The rest of the article is very enlightening and worth the time to read. Wesley Smith is a big fan of Michael Fumento's and it's easy to see why.
There is a distinct pattern emerging, which is that ESCR is a racket. Taxpayers and other investors are the marks. And there is a lot of money at stake. The really sad thing is that all of this money could be spent to develop real adult stem cell cures to benefit real people.
papijoe 10:15 AM
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