Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire/ Your Nose is Longer Than a Telephone Wire
Regenerative Medicine: Pathways to Cure
This propaganda video, produced by the Alliance for Medical Research, is so filled with lies and junk biology that it has to be denigrated as anti-science. I intend to write about this at greater length, but among the whoppers foisted in viewers in this propaganda video, we learn that chimpanzees have been "cured" of Parkinson's using embryonic stem cells (I would have heard of this, if it had been published in a medical journal), that doctors "will be able to cure" quadriplegia and other diseases (not hope to be able to treat effectively), and that embryonic stem cells are better than adult stem cells because they are "less of a problem when it comes to immune rejection," (which would be hard since in most experimental adult stem cell research the patient's own adult stem cells are used in the treatment, meaning there is no immune rejection).
This is a shameless scandal that the media should be picking apart. They won't, of course, because the media isn't much interested in exposing when "their side" doesn't tell the truth. More importantly, the science community should come down on the Alliance for its outrageous hyping and deceptions. If people ever come to believe they can't trust "the scientists" to be straight with them, the enterprise of science will suffer the most.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:24 AM
13 Comments
13 Comments:
Some people have no shame.
Hi Wesley,
I'm guessing the embryonic stem cell and chimpanzee parkinson's claim is regarding this story.
It is clear the study didn't "cure" Parkinson's disease in "chimpanzees." It claims "reduced symptoms" of a Parkinson's like disease in macaques , a type of monkey.
Plus, the cells were taken from monkey embryos not human embryos (as the video claimed).
Maybe there is some other experiment but if they're talking about the experiment above then they got it wrong on basically every count from where the embryonic stem cells came from, what kind of animal and the effect those cells had on the animal.
Not a hoax. I looked up the Website. Thanks, jivinj. Huge difference, if that is what the source is.
A non-fictional solient green commercial.
Am I the only person who thinks that this is in bad taste as well as being misinformative?
As the typical lone voice of dissent...
I didn't think it was that bad.
I can't vouch for all the claims it makes, thus I reserve opinion on its source reliability.
They didn't claim that chimps were fixed by human ESCs.
They always talk about ESCs as being IVF leftovers because that is the greatest controversy.
Other than that, I generally thought it was fine.
Royale, your dissenting voice is always welcome. But you are wrong when you claim they didn't claim to have cured chimps. I have transcribed the video for an article I am writing, and here is the statement in question: "Crippled rats have been made to walk again, insulin producing cells have reversed diabetes in animals, and Parkinson's disease has been cured in chimpanzees." The first two are mere distortions. The comment about the chimps is flat-out false.
You're misquoting me or you misread what I wrote. I'll repeat what I said.
I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the science. If you can critique it, please do.
They did state they fixed chimps. But they did not state that they fixed CHIMPS by HUMAN embryos, as was the concern of jivinj's comment:
"Plus, the cells were taken from monkey embryos not human embryos (as the video claimed)."
Your quotation does not state that they used human ESCs to fix chimps.
Royale,
Listen to it again.
At around 9:22 or so the commentator clearly says "proof of concept studies using early or embryonic human stem cells in animal models have shown remarkable results...." (my emphasis) and then the commentator lists the 3 supposed studies.
That's not what I heard.
"proof of concept studies using early or embryonic human stem cells AND animal models have shown remarkable results...."
"and," not "in."
The speech is slurred, I'll give you that, but I'm pretty sure it is "and".
Nevertheless, chimps have not been cured of Parkinson's with ES cells.
Even if it is "and" and not "in" how does hurt my objection? The claim would still say that human embryonic stem cells and animal models have done such and such...
Which they haven't done if the jokers at the Alliance are referring to the study I've linked to above since that study had nothing to do with human embryonic stem cells.
You ain't jivin', jivinj!
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