LA Times Fails to Offer Hope to Paralyzed Boy After Hwang's False Promise
This Los Angeles Times Story about Woo-suk Hwang promising a 12-year old paralyzed boy that he would walk again even though he knew his research was fraudulent, tells us all we need to know about the world's most infamous scientist. What a creep.
This was a good story worth recounting. But it is maddening that the Times failed to also report that there is growing hope for such boys with umbilical cord blood stem cells and olfactory stem cells-- both of which have been reported to restore some feeling and mobility to spinal cord injury patients. (The umbilical cord blood success has been reported in a peer reviewed journal. Olfactory successes in mice have also been written up, which is far more than we can say about ES cells. Dr. Carlos Lima has helped about three dozen patients with olfactory tissues. I am told this research will be reported this year.)
Is it too much for the mainstream media to report such facts when relevant, as it clearly was to this story? Apparently it is. But if it were embryonic stem cells demonstrating such promise, you wouldn't be able to fit the headlines on the front page.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:59 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Help me out...
I understand why we should use stem cells derived from adults and umbilical cords. Yes, those resources should be explored.
But I don't understand why it is bad to use embryos for the same purpose when there are so many leftover embryos from IVF, many of which are discarded? I have no problem with embryo adoption, I think it's great, but the vast majority of leftover embryos will not be adopted. To me, that enough makes us morally mandated to use them to further medicine, irregardless of other sources.
Aside from insensitivity to other's beliefs (i.e., religion), what is wrong with that?
The point of the post was about clueless reportage, not the ES vs. adult stem cell debate.
I have written a book about this, which explores your question at length. But briefly, I think it is wrong to use any human life as an object, an instrumentality, a harvestable crop. My big concern is cloning, in which life is made to be destroyed. Nor would such practices be limited to early embryos. Once artificial wombs were available, wwe would see the same arguments for cloned fetal farming that we do now for therapeutic cloning.
It isn't a religious position. Indeed, countries like France and Canada have outlawed all human cloning, and their religious communities have very little influence.
Thanks for contributing and for reading Secondhand Smoke.
No problem.
Which book is that?
Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World.
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