» Sunday, 8 February A.D. 2009

stem cells

I read Stem Cells: A Political History a couple weeks ago and made a note to post about it on my blog. I'm going to quote liberally from it, but you should go read the whole thing:

And on November 20, 2007, two independent teams published papers--one in the journal Cell, and the other in the journal Science--about the production of pluripotent human stem cells without using embryos or eggs or cloning. And with a silent thump, the topic suddenly fell off the front pages of the nation's newspapers...Basically, however, the breakthroughs in the fall of 2007 meant that the issue of stem cells was off the political table: If scientists can make pluripotent stem cells without creating or destroying embryos, then the pro-life community will no longer resist the research; and if the pro-lifers don't resist it, then their opponents will no longer use the topic to attack them. The news reporting--in the New York Times, particularly--has undergone an astonishing change over the last year: Where once they hyped stem cells as the looming cure for everything from Alzheimer's to diabetes, they now routinely explain how far scientists are from curing anything with stem cells...

In November 2005, the work of the Korean superstar Hwang Woo Suk was revealed as a fraud. For all the major scientific journals, embryonic research had become what Robert P. George and Eric Cohen would call “a litmus test for being pro-science and the central front in the alleged war of scientific reason against religious barbarians.” Science magazine had fast-tracked Hwang's work to let America know the cost of President Bush's refusal to fund embryonic stem-cell research. Scientific American published a mea culpa for all scientific journals, and it is, George and Cohen pointed out, “remarkable for both its honesty and remorse: `Hwang is guilty of raising false expectations, but too many of us held the ladder for him.'”

Not that the revelations of the Korean fraud changed much. Nature Biotechnology carried a report in April 2006 which declared that “the fear that United States researchers might lose ground to their international counterparts in human embryonic stem-cell research now appears to have become a fact.” The Washington Post began its news report on the study by telling its readers that “American scientists are falling behind researchers elsewhere in stem-cell discoveries because of U.S. limits on the use of federal funding.”

In fact, according to one survey, 46 percent of the scientific papers on stem cells were published in the United States. As Eric Cohen noted, the report in Nature Biotechnology actually demonstrates that “more than 85 percent of all the published embryonic stem-cell research in the world has used the lines approved for funding under the Bush policy. . . . It is clear that a great deal of the work done abroad has also involved these lines, even though most of it could not have been funded by the NIH. The lines are used, in other words, because they are useful, not only because they are eligible for federal support.”...

The history of the stem-cell debate is a study of what happens when politics and science reach out to each other. The politicians were guilty, but the scientists were more guilty, for they allowed--no, they encouraged--politicians to make stem-cell research a tool in the public fights over abortion, public religion, and high finance.

In the small demagogueries of a political season, the science of stem-cell research became susceptible to the easy lie and the useful exaggeration. A little shading of truth, a little twisting of facts--yes, the politics corrupted the science, but the scientists willingly aided the corruption. And with this history in mind, who will believe America's scientists the next time they tell us something that bears on an election? We have learned something over these years: When science looks like politics, that's because it is.

(Yes, I would like to grouse that the article doesn't actually provide citations for the research articles/surveys/etc. that support its position.)

But then just this past week, I read Has change come to biology? Stem cell research under Obama, which plays a significantly different tune:

President Obama's promise to restore science to its rightful place has raised the hopes of biologists that there will be swift action on what many view as a serious hindrance to biology: restrictions on the use of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). Federal funding of hESC research has been limited to lines created before August 9th, 2001--nearly nine years ago--and most of the acceptable lines have since been found to be inappropriate for clinical research; ethical issues involving informed consent affect the remaining handful. On Tuesday, the New York Stem Cell foundation hosted a panel that discussed how a lifting of the Bush-era restrictions on hESC research is likely to change hESC research.

So who's telling the truth here? If you read the First Things article, one comes away with the impression that embryonic stem cell research is (nearly) dead in the water and that there are much more promising avenues for research. Reading the Ars Technica article, one might think that interesting biological research on stem cells was all but halted during the Bush administration years and that we are finally opening our gates to Progress. There are other, smaller conflicts: a hint of conflict between the numbers cited by Eric Cohen (85% of the embryonic stem cell research in the world has been done with Bush-approved stem cell lines) and the Ars Technica claim that “most the acceptable lines have since been found to be inapproprite for clinical research.” Is that 85% figure just because research has found the lines are not useful and therefore Cohen (and First Things) is shading the truth, or is Ars just blowing smoke?

I do not believe that First Things would willingly lead its readers astray, but I also note that the authors of the article in question were not actually scientists, whereas John Timmer (author of the Ars Technica piece) was writing from a scientist-populated panel hosted by The New York Stem Cell Foundation--which obviously does have a dog in this fight.

So...who do you believe?

posted by Nate @ 1:49PM