Were California voters duped in supporting public funding of embryonic stem cell research? In 2004, they approved Proposition 71, a ballot measure that would allow the state to borrow $3 billion in order to push through the unethical research. Now, six years later, award-winning science journalist Sally Lehrman asks that question in the L.A. Times—and blames the media rather than the people who did the deceiving:
So were Californians duped?
Some would say yes. “There have been no cures, no therapies and little progress,” Investors Business Daily complained in an editorial earlier this year. Rush Limbaugh went further, declaring embryonic stem cell research “fraudulent, fake.”
But the truth is that science is a long and arduous process, and “breakthroughs” rest on a foundation of basic science. Most of the money spent so far has gone into new labs, training, tools and technologies and basic research, building blocks that are necessary precursors to discovery.
The public is aware that science is a “long and arduous process.” But ESCR was not sold as basic, speculative science but as an alchemical process that, with sufficient funding, could turn “discarded” embroyos into a cure for grandmother’s Alzheimer’s within a few years. The idea that therapeutic treatments were not imminent would have come as a surprise to the average Prop. 71 voter. Had they been told they were giving more money to their bankrupt state to buy petri dishes today for “basic research” they would have balked. Had they been told the truth—that such research will never, ever produce such cures—they would have been outraged at having been defrauded.
Instead of exposing this massive fraud—as a responsible journalist would do—Lehrman turns into a propagandist for the people who perpetuated this multi-billion dollar boondoggle:
It’s no surprise that the initiative’s proponents made big promises: They had something to sell. But instant miracles are uncommon in science, and journalists should do a better job making that clear. We need to highlight the uncertainties in science and, in medical quests such as stem cell therapies, emphasize the baby steps involved that in fact are big leaps: reproducing and growing these flexible cells, understanding how they work, using them to learn about disease, designing treatments and then testing the safety of any resulting therapy.
In the aftermath of the stem cell initiative, William H. Fisher, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Assn. of Northern California and Northern Nevada, found himself repeatedly having to explain such matters to hopeful families. “I don’t blame the Prop. 71 people, I blame the media,” he says. Alzheimer’s regularly led the list of potential stem cell cures in news reports, he says, but there’s no reason right now to believe that embryonic stem cells will solve the disease.
Was the horrible media misleading the people with overhyped stories while stem-cell researchers and ESCR advocates were attempting to warn the public that cures would only come far, far, far in the future?
Of course not. Supporters of Prop. 71 convinced the public to fork out more money to the failing state by ladling out a potent mix of white lies, wishful thinking, and outright deception. The media drank the Kook-Aid too of course, because on certain issues (particularly controversial science) they are more gullible than most. But it was the biomedical scientific community that allowed this fraud to be perpetuated on the public. They are the ones that must be held accountable.
However, since we’re focusing on the gullible media, let’s return to Lehrman, who proves to be even less savvy than the reporters she criticizes. She makes the bizarre claim (similar to one often heard in the global warming debate) that reporting the “other side of the story” forced pro-ESCR scientists to overstate claims about their research:
When we pit enthusiastic researchers against those who cite moral objections or technical difficulties, we obscure the uncertainty that scientists themselves acknowledge. In such a context, “the belief that a cure is ‘just around the corner’ is able to develop and circulate,” wrote sociologist Robert Evans and colleagues last year in a study of stem cell rhetoric.
Lehrman accuses her fellow journalists of falling down on the job, yet turns around and acts as an apologist for the very people who were deceiving the public. Throughout the article she pretends that the Prop. 71-supporting scientists were well-meaning, if a bit overeager, and had no intention of misleading the public. She seems completely unaware that they might have a rational motive for hyping the research. It has long been acknowledged (though, again, Lehrman seems to be completely unaware) that the researchers can use the “labs, training, tools and technologies” provided by government-funding to become extremely wealthy.
In 2002, the left-leaning Washington Monthly wrote about how such conflict of interests are common yet rarely discussed:
Today, many university scientists are neither teachers nor disinterested experts, but a hybrid–part executive and part researcher–pursuing new and little-understood business strategies. Like most academics, they have university affiliations and spend most of their time performing research.
But unlike, say, English professors, their research generates promising new medical patents and technologies, on which scientists can capitalize by launching their own off-campus biotech companies. These companies rarely sell therapies directly to patients. Instead they usually sell the fruits of their research–such as a gene-analysis device or a special type of laboratory animal–to large, established firms. Those larger firms buy their patented research in the hope they can be drawn upon to produce products or therapies for the consumer market. The research performed by academic entrepreneurs thus acts as a kind of catalyst on the broader field of biotechnology, which means that everyone involved–the entrepreneurs, universities, investors, and the firms who license patented technologies–prefer that it be as unrestricted as possible.
Even if embryo destructive research proves to be a complete failure (as many will privately acknowledge is likely) the process and procedures that are developed along the way can be a financial boon to them (though not necessarily the taxpayers). Is it any wonder they would be “enthusiastic” about getting billions in tax dollars that can be used to make them rich? These researchers are only human. Under similar circumstances, how many of us would be able to refuse the temptation to exaggerate?
But while its understandable—if not excusable considering the cost in human lives—that researchers would allow their own interests to trump those of the general public, the media’s job is to tell the whole truth. On this point, Lehrman is justified in chastising the media for its failure. Indeed, despite such shoddy and biased reporting, Lehrman has achieved her goal: Her own article is evidence that science writers are unable to adequately report on the true nature of embryonic stem cell research.
June 9th, 2010 | 9:32 am
“Had they been told the truth—that such reachers will never, ever produce such cures—they would have been outraged at having been defrauded.”
I wasn’t aware that you were so well-versed in biology. Please tell me how you know that this will not come about, that there will be no therapeutic treatments developed this way.
June 9th, 2010 | 10:09 am
freelunch I wasn’t aware that you were so well-versed in biology. Please tell me how you know that this will not come about, that there will be no therapeutic treatments developed this way.
I’m no expert in biology, but I’ve been following the stem cell issue for almost ten years (I used to work for a bioethics think-tank) and have learned the basics of stem cell science.
It doesn’t require an advanced degree to ask the basic question, “What is the problem with using embryonic cells now?” The answer is because they act much like cancer cells.
As stem cell researcher James Sherley has said, “Figuring out how to use human embryonic stem cells directly by transplantation into patients is tantamount to solving the cancer problem.”
So I should clarify my statement by saying, “If we figure out to cure cancer, then embryonic stem cells may be useful.”
Now I’ll admit that I’m more skeptical of all stem cell research—both ethical and unethical—than the average stem cell researcher would be. I think that while its a promising area of biomedical research, it is not going to be as revolutionary as some people hope. But if producing cures is the main goal of such research, we should be asking why adult stem cells—which have produced over 70 therapeutic treatments—do not get more attention. They are helping people right now rather than in some perfect world where cells acting liking cancer aren’t a problem.
(To answer my own question: Because while adult stem cells are more useful, they are uncontroversial. Support for embryo destructive research is not really about “cures” but is a stalking horse for abortion and cloning.)
June 9th, 2010 | 10:40 am
If a cure is found, you and your loved ones should be barred from getting any treatment from it! How dou you like that!
June 9th, 2010 | 11:19 am
Gerard,
IF a cure is found from embryonic cells, you should remember well all the lives destroyed utterly & without thought to achieve it before you jump to embrace it.
Exactly how many human lives in your opinion are worth a delay to Alzheimer’s or improved mobility for accident victims? Or any of the multitude of other promised cures?
Of course, we might all understand why some are so desperate to avoid mortality, given this morality. If no cure is found, they may realize that their complicit behavior in this atrocity bars them from something altogether more important. Luckily, God is so much more merciful to us than we are to the least of his children…
June 9th, 2010 | 12:19 pm
First of all 2004 wasn’t that long ago. Everyone who follows biotechs knows that it takes 10-15 years on average to get new drugs to market. This is because of the FDA and the fact that you have to monitor patients for months to years afterwards to verify the effectiveness of the drug. I find it hard to believe that anyone would actually think there would be an overnight success.
Also why is this unethical? The embryos used were going to be destroyed by the fertility clinics anyway weren’t they? I’m sure many people know someone who had problems getting pregnant so they went to a fertility clinic. Well guess what? They didn’t use all the embryo’s either and some were destroyed. Why should embryo’s be thrown away instead of being donated to science where they might actually have some use?
June 9th, 2010 | 12:26 pm
The RR floods the internet daily with bogus articles and bad science. It is obvious that religious beliefs which urge that the Bible or any other book is the divine inspiration of God and to be taken literally are operating under a 2000 year or greater handicap because they are not inspired by the discoveries that God has allowed our modern science to uncover. This same God is updating the scientists while the fundamentalists refuse to update the religions. And what we get is a religious version of science that argues in favor of the use of SCs, but just not ESC without understanding the way in which they are seamlessly all part of the same body and science needs to work with them all.There is no biblical or God given reason to block this research and the RR plays the fool when it casts the right to life card which has nothing to do with the morality or ethics of the use of discarded ESCs.
June 9th, 2010 | 3:42 pm
“Also why is this unethical? The embryos used were going to be destroyed by the fertility clinics anyway weren’t they?”
This is like asking why is it unethical to murder your neighbor since he will eventually die anyway. It completely misses the point as to the intrinsic value of the creation and the purpose endowed to it by its Creator (and I don’t mean the scientist who manipulated it into existence in the lab). Adding the sin of using ESC for research on top of the sin of creating it in the first place, for whatever reason, certainly adds no dignity or reasonableness to the actions of using human life for research. It’s like pointing to other bad behavior to justify one’s own bad behavior, which is truly poor argumentation and logic.
“There is no biblical or God given reason to block this research and the RR plays the fool when it casts the right to life card which has nothing to do with the morality or ethics of the use of discarded ESCs.”
Please, read the Bible before you attempt to discuss it.
June 9th, 2010 | 6:33 pm
“This is like asking why is it unethical to murder your neighbor since he will eventually die anyway.”
Except it’s nothing like that at all. Bad analogies are bad.
June 9th, 2010 | 6:51 pm
Dear Erin,
How can a modern representative of the the same Church that burned “witches”, gypsies and Jews at the stake in the most horrific torture known to man while exacting false confessions presume to know anything about what is ethical without showing how you come to such knowledge? Where does the Church derive the authority to ex-communicate Galileo, but not one Nazi, not even Hitler himself, and speak about the ethics of dealing with body parts that the Church is ill equipped to even understand, let alone arbitrate the comparative values to medicine and mankind of ASC vs ESC. You are making light of serious questions, and you cannot even support your position with the text of your own sacred writings because they do not support the positions you have taken. Perhaps you believe, in earnest, the things you say, but your dismissive arrogance shows how little foundation for your beliefs you possess, that you cannot even discuss them. Personally, I find it a travesty of significant proportions that modern people that follow the Bible make such a mess, and so discredit it.
Respectfully,
End2War
June 10th, 2010 | 10:41 am
Dear Erin,
Let me be more specific. Your post refers to “the intrinsic value of the creation” but in the next sentence refers to “the sin of using ESC for research” yet you have no authority that supports either of these remarks. They are your personal opinions or beliefs, perhaps, and they appear to follow the paper written by the Vatican, but they are unsupported and empty ideas.
What science sees in the ESCs is a value or potential value of the creation, but the Church denies that value. Yet the Church provides no value, gain, or benefit of any kind to support the idea that these ESCs should be discarded. The choice is between use for scientific value and destruction because you say so. They way you come to your view is to examine how these ESC cells can be used if they are implanted in the womb, and you chose to ignore all other uses that can occur. Yet the intrinsic value of the creation, as you put it, and the “purpose endowed to it by the Creator”, as you also put it, are both unknown to you as you are a mere mortal, and you will find no assistance in any of the ancient writings that remotely addresses this question. As a modern man who choses to guide those that place faith in you and Faith in the Church, you must examine your own flaws and find the correct value and purpose, least you lead all astray who follow your beliefs. You must assess what is meant by the commandment “thou shalt not kill” in a complicated world in which killing is permitted and required, at times, and you must assess how the Church should and does look at questions about the use of body parts. There is a moral dilemma presented whenever all choices have some elements that are good and some elements that may be undesired. How to resolve these conflicts may be an unsolvable problem that forces a choice about which priority you support more. The irony is that both the Church and the scientist sees the same spark of life in these ESCs and both the Church and the scientists places the same value in this spark, but the Church would prefer this spark be extinguished by discarding the unused ESCs while the scientist would prefer the spark be used for the “purpose endowed to it by its Creator”, which the scientist is equipped to understand, and the Church is ill-equipped to know. The Church’s position today on this subject is no different than it was in the middle ages when it was conducting the inquisition, except now the people that the Church is torturing are those souls that could benefit from the science that the Church, once again, desires to suppress. This fundamentalist and repressive behavior by the Church is totalitarian by nature, and it is so to repeat the errors of the Church for no benefit to mankind. In the end, this foolish position by the Church can never be supported and will bring a modern world and an ancient Church farther and farther apart, to the detriment of the Church, which still has influence, but squanders its purpose and influence in the support of an absurd and illogical position that casts the Church in the worst light and leaves it open to attack. The Pope is only a man and the Church is only an organization of clerics. It does not know the will of the Creator on this subject, but if it were to try to ferret it out from the scriptures or the evidence, there is only one conclusion that makes sense. You must try to preserve the values of protecting life, but not ignore how the scientist may achieve this value, or why else would the Creator endow mankind with science?
June 14th, 2010 | 3:52 am
I think your post is exactly right, except for the claim that “[h]ad they [the Prop. 71 voters] been told they were giving more money to their bankrupt state to buy petri dishes today for ‘basic research’ they would have balked.” As evidence for why I disagree with that claim, I offer my own experience of trying to convince otherwise reasonable people, before the vote, that no reputable scientist thought that embryonic stem cell research had a chance of curing Alzheimer’s. No one, it seemed, was willing to listen or, for that matter, was even interested in finding out whether or not my claims were true. As further evidence, I offer the several nay-saying posts above. Even after the fact, it seems, you can’t convince people that they were duped. I guess if you want something badly enough, there’s no reason to let the facts get in the way.
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