More on the ACT work; Magnus confused?
An article by Marie McCullough of the Philadelphia Inquirer, reprinted in the San Jose Mercury-News on August 31, 2006, contained some troubling assertions about the way in which the ACT stem cell research was presented.
McCullough wrote:
In an interview with The Inquirer last week, Lanza explicitly said some of the embryos survived and were returned to frozen storage.
Wednesday, he said he was referring to embryos used in experiments that were complementary to, but separate from, the Nature paper.
This bit of dissembling is separate from the assertion that the past use of PGD in IVF proves that one cell can be removed from an 8 to 16 cell embryo (blastocyst) without impairing the ability of the embryo to grow. McCullough described this point as follows:
Lanza's team wrote that the paper shows that single cells ``can be used to establish human embryonic stem-cell lines using an approach that does not interfere with the developmental capacity of the parent embryo.''
Wednesday, Lanza said he saw no reason to explain that they had not actually used that approach on the embryos from which stem cells were generated.
``The scientific breakthrough here is that a single cell has the capacity to make embryonic stem cells,'' he said. ``It was not the purpose of this study to repeat what we already know'' -- that an early embryo can be biopsied without killing it.
The most bizarre statement in the McCullough article was the following:
``It's deeply disturbing,'' said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. ``But I think it speaks to why we need state and federal funding of this research. Otherwise, we're dependent on small, underfunded companies like Advanced Cell Technology to do the work. They have a history of making somewhat spurious announcements when they're in need of cash.''
One recalls that it was the publicly-funded Hwang Woo-Suk that pulled off one of the greatest scientific frauds of all time. Within the United States, the work of Hwang Woo-Suk was championed by Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh. Schatten was a named co-author on the 2005 paper in Science, which was formally retracted by Science in 2006. Schatten is the number one recipient of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in the United States (federal funding is NOT banned; it is limited). IPBiz finds the comment of Magnus deeply disturbing.
The McCullough article included text on the refinements made by the journal Nature:
But the lay media weren't the only ones who misunderstood. Nature, the prestigious international journal that published the paper, initially issued a news release that declared Lanza's team had made embryonic stem-cell colonies ``while leaving the embryo intact.'' The journal has since issued two ``clarifications'' and published online the supplemental data showing the embryos were destroyed.
``We feel it necessary to explain that ... the embryos that were used for these experiments did not remain intact,'' Ruth Francis, Nature's senior press officer, e-mailed the media.
Asked why Nature editors did not make that clear in the paper, Francis e-mailed The Philadelphia Inquirer: ``We are looking into the possibility of further clarification of this paper.''
***Followup***
One IPBiz reader stated: I think the Magnus assertion about state/federal funding (presumably to academe?) is bull. EVERYONE who receives fed $$, trumpets their latest "news" and "breakthroughs" to justify more $$, next round of $$. There is no reason to think academe is more "pure" and "honest"....and we all know academe won't bring the research to commercial fruition. Indeed, some research (by being "open"), prevents commercialization, damages deep moats, makes commercialization more risky.
As a SEPARATE issue, note that Magnus is talking about small companies like ACT (They have a history of making somewhat spurious announcements when they're in need of cash) when in fact the issue is truth of the press release by NATURE (not the truth of what ACT said). Thus, the Magnus statement is off-point to the issue AND is separately not true (the hypothetical misstatements of small companies are not an argument FOR public funding).
McCullough wrote:
In an interview with The Inquirer last week, Lanza explicitly said some of the embryos survived and were returned to frozen storage.
Wednesday, he said he was referring to embryos used in experiments that were complementary to, but separate from, the Nature paper.
This bit of dissembling is separate from the assertion that the past use of PGD in IVF proves that one cell can be removed from an 8 to 16 cell embryo (blastocyst) without impairing the ability of the embryo to grow. McCullough described this point as follows:
Lanza's team wrote that the paper shows that single cells ``can be used to establish human embryonic stem-cell lines using an approach that does not interfere with the developmental capacity of the parent embryo.''
Wednesday, Lanza said he saw no reason to explain that they had not actually used that approach on the embryos from which stem cells were generated.
``The scientific breakthrough here is that a single cell has the capacity to make embryonic stem cells,'' he said. ``It was not the purpose of this study to repeat what we already know'' -- that an early embryo can be biopsied without killing it.
The most bizarre statement in the McCullough article was the following:
``It's deeply disturbing,'' said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. ``But I think it speaks to why we need state and federal funding of this research. Otherwise, we're dependent on small, underfunded companies like Advanced Cell Technology to do the work. They have a history of making somewhat spurious announcements when they're in need of cash.''
One recalls that it was the publicly-funded Hwang Woo-Suk that pulled off one of the greatest scientific frauds of all time. Within the United States, the work of Hwang Woo-Suk was championed by Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh. Schatten was a named co-author on the 2005 paper in Science, which was formally retracted by Science in 2006. Schatten is the number one recipient of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in the United States (federal funding is NOT banned; it is limited). IPBiz finds the comment of Magnus deeply disturbing.
The McCullough article included text on the refinements made by the journal Nature:
But the lay media weren't the only ones who misunderstood. Nature, the prestigious international journal that published the paper, initially issued a news release that declared Lanza's team had made embryonic stem-cell colonies ``while leaving the embryo intact.'' The journal has since issued two ``clarifications'' and published online the supplemental data showing the embryos were destroyed.
``We feel it necessary to explain that ... the embryos that were used for these experiments did not remain intact,'' Ruth Francis, Nature's senior press officer, e-mailed the media.
Asked why Nature editors did not make that clear in the paper, Francis e-mailed The Philadelphia Inquirer: ``We are looking into the possibility of further clarification of this paper.''
***Followup***
One IPBiz reader stated: I think the Magnus assertion about state/federal funding (presumably to academe?) is bull. EVERYONE who receives fed $$, trumpets their latest "news" and "breakthroughs" to justify more $$, next round of $$. There is no reason to think academe is more "pure" and "honest"....and we all know academe won't bring the research to commercial fruition. Indeed, some research (by being "open"), prevents commercialization, damages deep moats, makes commercialization more risky.
As a SEPARATE issue, note that Magnus is talking about small companies like ACT (They have a history of making somewhat spurious announcements when they're in need of cash) when in fact the issue is truth of the press release by NATURE (not the truth of what ACT said). Thus, the Magnus statement is off-point to the issue AND is separately not true (the hypothetical misstatements of small companies are not an argument FOR public funding).
posted by Lawrence B. Ebert at 5:06 AM
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