{"id":6267,"date":"2006-08-28T13:25:51","date_gmt":"2006-08-28T13:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/busted.html"},"modified":"2006-08-28T13:25:51","modified_gmt":"2006-08-28T13:25:51","slug":"busted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/busted.html","title":{"rendered":"Busted"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week’s supposedly non-destructive embryonic stem-cell research breakthrough has, in the course of a few days, been exposed as not such a breakthrough and rather destructive after all. For a summary, go to Wesley Smith’s blog – Smith commends the Economist today for getting the story right:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles: Proving that it is possible to report accurately about the stem cell debate, The Economist<\/span> actually got it right when describing ACT’s stem cell experiment, to wit:<\/p>\n

"The firm’s success is not, however, quite as clear-cut as it seems. The researchers only had 16 embryos…, so to maximise the number cells they had to play with, they used most of the cells in each. That, of course, destroyed the embryos, so their technique is only a stepping stone to the desired outcome of working from a single cell each embryo. Even then, they were able to establish only two stable cell lines from some 91 initial cells. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Smith’s article in the Weekly Standard<\/a><\/p>\n

In short – the Nature <\/em>article described the experiment accurately. It was the press release<\/em> from the research company whose research was presented in the article that misstated the facts, but it was the same research company whose stocks rose late last week as a result of the press’ unquestioning reporting of their press release as "news."<\/p>\n

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So now, it’s d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu<\/em> all over again, with ACT lionized by a media stampede over a purported research breakthrough that the company did not actually achieve. This is not to say, of course, that deriving embryonic stem cell lines from a procedure that allows the embryo to survive is impossible–only that it hasn’t been done. Lanza’s experiment does demonstrate that stem cell lines can be obtained earlier than previously thought. But that wasn’t good enough for ACT’s pub licity office or the lazy reporters who regurgitated the press release. The failure to report this story accurately amounts to massive journalistic malpractice–and once again ACT is laughing all the way to the bank.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week’s supposedly non-destructive embryonic stem-cell research breakthrough has, in the course of a few days, been exposed as not such a breakthrough and rather destructive after all. For a summary, go to Wesley Smith’s blog – Smith commends the Economist today for getting the story right: Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles: Proving that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nBusted - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/busted.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Busted - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last week’s supposedly non-destructive embryonic stem-cell research breakthrough has, in the course of a few days, been exposed as not such a breakthrough and rather destructive after all. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}