Science by Press Release?

Originally published in The Weekly Standard and offered for your consideration. As always, your comments are encouraged. Let's talk about stem cell research...

"NEW STEM CELL METHOD avoids destroying em-bryos," the New York Times headline blared. "Stem cell breakthrough may end political logjam," chimed in the Los Angeles Times. "Embryos spared in stem cell creation," affirmed USA Today. Reporting the same supposed scientific achievement by Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), the Washington Post quoted the company's bioethics adviser Ronald Green: "You can honestly say this cell line is from an embryo that was in no way harmed or destroyed."

Unfortunately, you can't "honestly" say that. The above headlines--like Green's statement and innumerable similar press accounts around the world--are just plain wrong. While ACT did indeed issue a press release heralding its embryonic stem cell experiment as having "successfully generated human embryonic stem cells using an approach that does not harm embryos," the actual report of the research led by ACT chief scientist Robert Lanza, published in Nature, tells a very different story. In fact, Lanza destroyed all 16 of the embryos he used, just as in conventional embryonic stem cell research.
www.weeklystandard.com...

[edit on 8/29/2006 by Stormrider]

There was an article about this earlier. Basically, the arguement is, even if u do not destroy the embryo while extracting a stem cell, the embryo is gonna get destroyed anyway.

And even if you did not extract anything from it, the embryo would be destroyed as well.

Which is why opposition to stemcell research is irrational nonsense.