Turning An Award Announcement to Suit a Political Agenda

On Sunday 4 October 2009, AP put out an article about the Nobel Prize for medicine & who were among the nominees. They article, Stem cell pioneers among Nobel Prize candidates, talked about their work in discovering stem cells. But it quickly devolved into poor science that showed the "culture of death" bias in the Main stream media. Note how they follow the usual tactic of lumping all types of stem cells together.

Here are the pertanant paragraphs: "Ernest McCulloch and James Till won the prestigious Lasker Award in 2005 and experts say they could also be among the front-runners for a Nobel for their early 1970's identification of the regenerative cells. Many winners of the Lasker Award — often dubbed "America's Nobel" — go on to win Nobel Prizes.
Given their special abilities, stem cells offer the possibility to replace damaged cells, tissues and maybe organs to treat diseases such as Alzheimer's, heart disease, diabetes, or rheumatoid arthritis.
Growing stem cells from human eggs has long been a controversial issue, but in a recent breakthrough scientists have managed to avoid the ethical quandaries by making human stem cells from ordinary skin cells."

The 1st paragraph wouldn't be so bad if it made it clear what type of regenerative cells thy were. They don't point out that the cells were a specific type of stem cell found in the bone marrow of mice. In other words a type of adult stem cell.

But it is the next paragraph where the bias starts to really shine through. You will notice there is no mention of the actual treatments out there that are already doing the things they say stem cells offer the possibility for. Why? Because then they would have to mention these things are already being done using adult stem cells. & without the need for what they talk about in the next paragraph, embryonic stem cells.

So now we get to the most egregious part of the article. The whole thing is written in such a way that it presents the only source of stem cells as coming from embryos. & even there they don't even use the correct source. Notice they talk about human eggs, not embryos. You cannot get stem cells from an egg. It has to be an embryo.

& the science just keeps getting worse. After making it sound like they can only get stem cells from a human egg, they raise the controversy spector & then make it sound like this discovery of reprograming cells finally creates a way to use adult cells to make stem cells. Never mind that there are some ethical concerns that have been raised about that process. The whole slant once again makes it sound like the only natural source of stem cells is from the egg (again, actually a human embryo).

You will note that the ultimate subliminal message is this: These people found this wonderful source of potential cures that have not yet been found, but may be found some day, stem cells. There are these horrible people out there who oppose the use of stem cells & that WE MAY HAVE FOUND A WAY TO SHUT THEM UP.

So we see in those 3 paragraphs an attack on Catholics & others who respect the life of the unborn. We see a bunch of lies & half truths to mislead the reader so that they can build up support for embryonic stem cell research. & we see them keeping real treatments hidden from people that need them, thus sacrificing them for their "culture of death" agenda.

PS A comment by Goran K. Hansson, new secretary of the medicine prize committee struck me ironic. The article said: "He also said the committee doesn't consider the ethical implications of discoveries." For those who may not understand, Alfred Nobel, arms dealer & inventor, started his Peace Prize & the rest of the prizes named after him because of his concerns about the violent uses of his big discovery, dynamite. He was concerned about the legacy he was leaving when a premature obituary said that Le marchand de la mort est mort ("The merchant of death is dead"). It went on to say, "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday."

Lets see now, dynamite can be used ethicly, & is in construction & demolition projects in various ways. But it can also be used unethicly, like killing people.

Given those facts, I suspect that Nobel would be concerned about ethical & unethical implications. Granted, stem cell research per se can be either & thus discoveries that are done using ethical methods should be. But an award given for embryonic stem cell research or any other type of research using unethical means should never even be considered in any way shape or form.

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FYI: They didn't get the prize, 3 other scientists who have done research that may help in treating & preventing cancer won it instead.