Of Stem Cells and Fairy Tales - weeklystandard.com
"stem cell experts confess . . . that of all the diseases that may be someday cured by embryonic stem cell treatments, Alzheimer's is among the least likely to benefit."But people like Nancy Reagan have been allowed to believe otherwise, "a distortion" Weiss writes that "is not being aggressively corrected by scientists." Why? The false story line helps generate public support for the biotech political agenda. As Weiss noted, "It [Nancy Reagan's statement in support of ESCR] is the kind of advocacy that researchers have craved for years, and none wants to slow its momentum."
Scientists promoted a similar scam back in the mid-1990's concerning fetal tissue transplants. By killing unborn babies and implanting their brain tissue in people with Alzheimer's, we were told, would be able to grow new brain tissue. The treatments proved futile. But that part wasn't ballyhooed by the media.
One thoughtful commentator sadly deceived by this scam was Morton Kondracke, whose wife Milly developed Alzheimer's in the mid-1990's. She had fetal tissue implants, which failed to help. Sadly, Kondracke is now grasping at stem-cell research, and published an article in the Washington Post magazine a couple of years ago pleading for it. It appears that he is about to be disappointed again.
The way this issue is framed is all wrong. When you hear the news reports this week, they're generally brief, so it sounds like it's the Bush Administration banning research on something called "stem cells." The word "embryonic," when it appears at all, is sufficiently scientific to disguise what's really going on.
The media probably want to promote confusion on the matter, as to help build opposition to the Administration's current policy on Federal embryonic stem cell research funding. Most people probably don't know that all the Administration has legal authority to do is decide about Federal funding. Thus Bush's 2002 policy amounts simply to a decision to allow NIH funding for only 47 existing lines of embryonic stem cells, and for no new lines.
Stem cells donated by adults, of course, are an entirely different manner. But as usual, the corrupted medical establishment unfortunately wants radical autonomy to use taxpayer money for whatever research it pleases, no matter what the moral wrongs involved may be. And the media as usual play into their hands.
This is another one of those pernicious media meta-narratives: "Embryonic stem cell research could save Grandma's Baby Boom Children from Having to Deal With Her Alzheimer's, so it's good, and only mean ideological people oppose it."
that distortion is criminal