BioSpin Why Adult Stem Cell Research Successes Get Downplayed by the Media
- WESLEY J. SMITH
"Adult-Stem-Cell Breakthrough!" the headlines should have screamed. "Stunning Discovery Could Mean No Need to Use Embryos in Research." Unfortunately, with the notable exception of a front-page story in the Boston Globe, the mainstream media has significantly downplayed this potentially exciting scientific discovery.
"Adult-Stem-Cell Breakthrough!" the headlines should have screamed.
"Stunning Discovery Could Mean No Need to Use Embryos in Research." Unfortunately,
with the notable exception of a front-page story in the Boston Globe, the
mainstream media has significantly downplayed this potentially exciting scientific
discovery.
Here's the scoop: As originally reported late last year in
the medical journal Blood, Dr. Catherine M. Verfaillie and other researchers
at the Stem Cell Institute, University of Minnesota, have discovered a way to
coax an adult cell found in the bone marrow to exhibit many of the attributes
that supposedly make embryonic stem cells irreplaceable to the development future
"miracle" medical therapies. While there is still much research to be done, "multi-potent
adult progenitor cells" (MAPCs) appear to be versatile, that is, capable of transforming
into different types of tissues. (In a culture dish, the cells can be coaxed into
becoming muscle, cartilage, bone, liver, or different types of neurons in the
brain.) They are also malleable, meaning they can do so relatively easily. They
also exhibit the "immortality" valued in embryonic cells, that is to say, they
seem capable of being transformed into cell lines that can be maintained indefinitely.
At the same time, these adult cells do not appear to present the acute danger
associated with embryonic stem cells: the tendency to grow uncontrollably causing
tumors or even cancers.
This should be a big story considering the intense
controversy over embryonic-stem-cell research (ESCR) and the coming attempt in
the United States Senate to outlaw human cloning (S.790). Indeed, The New York
Times and Washington Post consider embryonic-stem-cell research so
important including the manufacture and use of human-clone embryos in
such experiments that both have repeatedly editorialized in favor of turning
the throttle full-speed ahead on this immoral endeavor. Yet, when the potentially
crucial discovery of an adult cell that could make embryonic destruction and therapeutic
cloning unnecessary comes to light and just at the time when the United
States Senate is about to argue whether to outlaw the cloning of human embryos
other than the splendid Boston Globe article, the story has been
significantly underplayed.
The New York Times story written by
Nicholas Wade with Sheryl Gay Stolberg ran deep inside the paper (page A-14),
under the headline, "Scientists Herald a Versatile Adult Cell." While the Times
headline and reporting focused upon the actual story, it failed to provide many
of the significant details found in the Boston Globe reporting, and as
a result, the story lost much of its punch.
The Washington Post
smothered the importance of the story altogether in a story bylined by Rick Weiss
that ran on page A-8. Headlined, "In Senate, Findings Intensify Arguments on Human
Cloning," the actual discovery itself is barely described. The first mention of
it comes in the fourth paragraph, which focuses primarily on a statement by Verfaillie
downplaying her own discovery so as not to interfere with the pro-cloning and
ESCR research agenda. Indeed, the primary thrust of the Post reportage
focuses on the reasons why this discovery should not deter destructive embryonic
research.
The story was also covered by relative brief wire-service
reports and in a much better story in New Scientist magazine. In any event,
with such muffled coverage, it is unlikely that news of the breakthrough will
receive the concentrated television coverage essential to a story reaching critical
mass. As a consequence, most Americans will probably never hear about it or understand
its potential importance.
This isn't the first time that major breakthroughs
in adult-stem-cell research have received under-whelming coverage. Indeed, a discernable
pattern has developed in the mainstream press regarding these issues. Scientific
breakthroughs involving embryonic cells generally receive the full-brass-band
treatment, with front-page coverage that often leaps to the all-important television
news. Meanwhile, you can usually hear the crickets chirping when scientists announce
a breakthrough in adult-stem-cell research, or, as in the Post story, the
reportage places more emphasis on why the breakthrough should not deter destructive
embryonic research than on the actual adult-cell experiments.
There
are many examples of this phenomenon. Here are just a few:
On July 19,
2001, the Harvard University Gazette reported that mice with Type 1 diabetes
(an autoimmune disorder) were completely cured of their disease using adult stem
cells. This was accomplished by destroying the cells responsible for the diabetes,
at which point, the animals' own adult stem cells regenerated the missing cells
with healthy tissue. Dr. Denise Faustman told the Gazette, that if the
therapy works out in humans "we should be able to replace damaged organs and tissues
by using adult stem cells, thus eliminating, at least temporarily, the need to
harvest and transplant stem cells from embryos and fetuses." If this accomplishment
a compete cure of a devastating disease had been obtained using
embryonic cells, the headlines would have matched those seen on V-J-Day. But I
know of no general media, either press or electronic, which reported the story.
On June 15, 2001, the Globe and Mail (Canada) reported a wonderful
story that could provide great hope to people with spinal injuries. Israeli doctors
injected paraplegic Melissa Holley, age 18, who became disabled when her spinal
cord was severed in an auto accident. After researchers injected her with her
own white blood cells, she regained the ability to move her toes and control her
bladder. This is the exact kind of therapy that embryonic-stem-cell boosters only
hope they can begin to achieve in ten years. Yet, is has been accomplished in
the here and now, and other than the Globe story, I know of no other reportage.
In December 2001, Tissue Engineering, a peer-reviewed journal,
reported that researchers believe they will be able to use stem cells found in
fat to rebuild bone. The researchers are about to enter extensive animal studies.
If these pan out, people with osteoporosis and other degenerative bone conditions
could benefit significantly. Yet, other than appearing on an online health newswire,
I have seen nothing about it from the mainstream press.
All of this
begs an intriguing question: Why is there so much less interest in adult/alternative-stem-cell-research
successes stories among the media than they exhibit toward embryonic advances?
After all, "the science," were all that mattered, the visibility and coverage
of stories like those related above would at least equal the attention given to
ESCR stories. And therein lies the rub. I don't think that science is the primary
issue driving the extent and depth of news coverage. Media culture is.
It
is no secret that most members of the media are politically liberal and adherents
to a rational materialist worldview. They are also (generally) emotionally pro-choice
on abortion. Because the cloning/ESCR issues force us to dwell on whether unborn
human life has intrinsic value simply because it is human, the issue tends to
be viewed by journalists through a distorting abortion prism.
This is
very unfortunate. Abortion is factually irrelevant to this debate: The legal reason
abortion is permitted is to prevent women from being forced to do with their bodies
that which they do not wish to do, e.g. gestate and give birth. But in cloning
and ESCR, no woman is being forced to do anything with her body. That is one reason
why people on both sides of the abortion divide oppose ESCR and human cloning.
For example, Judy Norsegian (author of the feminist tome Our Bodies Ourselves)
and the liberal public-policy advocate Jeremy Rifkin both oppose therapeutic and
reproductive cloning.
But that fact hasn't sunk in. And so the news
sources the media uses to present the case against cloning/ESCR are usually people
they can damn (in their eyes) with the label, "opponent of abortion." Thus, it
appears that the same dynamics that lead The New York Times and other media
outlets to refuse to use the term "partial birth abortion" when covering that
issue, are at play in editorial decisions about how to report upon this one.
I think another part of the explanation for the shallow coverage of adult-stem-cell
research is the media's obsession with "credentials." When scientists say that
embryonic stem cells offer far greater hope for future medical therapies than
do adult cells, journalists take one look at their curricula vitae and believe
them wholeheartedly. Never mind that these biotech spokespersons may be as ideologically
driven to their opinions in favor of research as the "usual suspects" in the pro-life
movement are to theirs opposing it. And never mind that the incomes of some of
these scientists may depend on continued funding for ESCR and/or cloning. And
never mind that events have disproved their repeated assertions that future cell
therapies cannot be derived in any way other than through embryonic sources. And
never mind that President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission, which
first urged the government to fund ESCR, stated that such experiments are "justifiable
only if no less morally problematic alternatives are available for advancing the
research" a state of affairs we have surely now reached. And forget that
Big Biotech has the same profit-driven agenda as other industries that are viewed
so skeptically by the media such as Big Tobacco and Big Oil. The multiple university
degrees and rational materialistic credentials make what the biotech researchers
say more "true" then whatever cloning/ESCR opponents may argue regardless
of the actual evidence.
Finally, clout in public-policy disputes usually
boils down to money. Quite often, reporters don't find stories; stories find reporters.
That is how PR firms make the big bucks; being paid quite handsomely to alert
journalists to stories their clients' want covered. In this fight, Big Biotech's
very deep pockets almost guarantee coverage that is skewed in favor of destroying
embryos in experiments and permitting the creation of human-research clones. Or
to paraphrase an old saying, he or she who has the gold gets to spin the story.
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Acknowledgement
Wesley J. Smith. "BioSpin Why Adult Stem Cell Research Successes Get Downplayed by the Media." National Review Magazine (January 28, 2001).
This article is reprinted with permission from National Review Magazine. To subscribe to the National Review Magazine write P.O. Box 668, Mount Morris, Ill 61054-0668 or phone 815-734-1232.
The Author
Wesley J. Smith is an American lawyer and author and a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism. In 2004 he was named by the National Journal as one of the nation’s top expert thinkers in bioengineering for his work in bioethics. He is among the world's foremost critics of assisted suicide and utilitarian bioethics. He is the author of fourteen books including: The War on Humans, Culture of Death: The Age of "Do Harm" Medicine, A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy, Power over Pain: How to Get the Pain Control You Need, Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World, Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America, Power Over Pain: How to Get the Pain Control You Need, and Forced Exit: the Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder. Wesley J. Smith is on the advisory board of the Catholic Education Resource Center.
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