NIH Utilizes Correct Cloning Definition: Why Can't the KC STAR and Kit Wagar?
This is how the term "somatic cell nuclear transfer" is defined on the National Institutes of Health Web site:
Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT--A technique that combines an enucleated egg (nucleus removed) and the nucleus of a somatic cell to make an embryo. SCNT is the scientific term for cloning. SCNT can be used for therapeutic or reproductive purposes, but the initial stage that combines an enucleated egg and a somatic cell nucleus is the same. See also therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning.Oh, and guess what? There is no entry in the NIH stem cell glossary for "early stem cells," the euphemistic advocacy term Wagar's uses in his reporting--as do the editorial writers for the KC Star--in place of the scientifically accurate and logically descriptive "embryonic stem cells." This violates proper journalistic standards, it seems to me, because the Fifth Estate is supposed to inform the public, not propagandize it.
I have sent this information to Kit Wagar. But what do you bet that he and the KC Star editorial writers don't align their future word usage to match the proper and accurate scientific terminology.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:15 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Wesley,
It's too bad the NIH's definitions of therapeutic and reproductive cloning could not be a little more accurate. It's interesting that for each term they begin with the goal/purpose, not a description of what it involves (process). In fact, while they describe the process of cloning in their TC entry, they do not describe the process of cloning in their RC entry. I wonder if they purposely did so to avoid making it obvious that TC and RC only differ with respect to their scientific goals? At least both entries noted that the "outcome" is an embryo.
In their definition of reproductive cloning they say Dolly was the first "animal" cloned. My understanding was that it was frogs a couple of decades earlier. No? Or were they cloned using blastomere separation rather than SCNT?
Jason: They meant mammal cloned, but even that is inaccurate. It is not well known that Dolly was not the first cloned mammal using the nuclear transfer technique. About two years before her birth, two lambs were born from the same process using a nuclei taken from embryonic cells. Dolly is accurately described as the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell, specifically, the cell from a dead ewe's mammary gland, hence the researchers naming Dolly after the boxum Dolly Parton.
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