Alliance for Medical Research: "Science and Spin"
My piece in the Daily Standard is out today deconstructing the ridiculous piece of propaganda drivel: "Regenerative Medicine: Pathway to Cures" produced by the Houston-based Alliance for Medical Research.
Science depends on intellectual integrity to be, well, science. Pathway to Cures is anti-science because it is profoundly deceptive; in the words it uses, the hyped claims it makes, and it apparent resort to outside fabrication, e.g., chimpanzees have been "cured" with human embryonic stem cells.
What is sad is that I am not the one who should be up in arms about this: "The scientists" should be, because when a supposedly scientific "educational" video is actually mere propaganda, the endeavor of science itself is harmed. It is time for the leaders of the scientific community to begin insisting on accuracy and integrity in debating the various political disputes we have over science and research policy issues. If they don't, in the end the worst casualty will be science itself.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:40 AM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
This from a reader: "I just read your WS piece on AMR. These people are just liars. It is so brazen that I’m in utter shock.
BTW, it is not affiliated with Baylor University. Rather, it is affiliated with the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, which is not part of Baylor University. So, you may want to ask the WS remove that connection."
Me: I have alerted the WS about the apparent error with regard to the school ties, and I am sure it will be corrected. But I must say, that a MEDICAL school would associate with these purveyors of garbage science is indeed, shocking.
Why don't they ever name labotomies for unrully girls and (other) psychiatric patients when they're mentioning all the past skepticism about medical interventions?
And when they're talking about migrating scientists, they never mention Paul Simmons, who came to Texas from Australia - he's the head of the International Society of Stem Cell Research.
Unfortunately, the whole Texas medical establishment is all wrapped up in embryonic stem cell research. The UT system, Texas A&M, Rice, Baylor College of Medicine and all joined with Siegal's Genetics Policy Institute to welcome Hwang in June 2005. The University of Texas at Houston has raised $230 million in private money for the Brown Institute of Molecular Medicine and Prevention of Human Disease - some of that was earmarked at donation for embryonic stem cell research.
But we're doing our best to hold the line, down here. Texas is the State that also gave us quite a bit of adult, ethical stem cell research on heart disease, and all those embryonic-like stem cells from umbilical cord blood that are yielding liver and lung cells.
I went to the Alliance's WEB site. I posted what it had to say about their mendacious video.
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