BAD SCIENCE, VILE POLITICS:

Scripps Howard Refuses to Permit Fumento to Tell the Truth About Adult Stem Cells (Wesley J. Smith, 3/11/05, Secondhand Smoke)

According to [Michael] Fumento, his syndicate, Scripps Howard refused to publish the article, based on it allegedly being a "diatribe." What? Fumento's tone is utterly reasonable. The facts about which he opines are indisputable. Indeed, SCIENCE DID publish the study demonstrating that adult spleen stem cells completely cured mice with late stage juv. diabetes. Despite this amazing success, the JDRF DID refuse to fund human trials. Finally, the JDRF DID fund Proposition 71, which created a right to therapeutic cloning, to the tune of about $2 million. Yet, even IF that technology EVER becomes an effective treatment for juv. diabetes, it is at least a decade or more away.

This raises an important question: Is the JDRF most interested in finding a cure for juvenile diabetes or in promoting embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic human cloning?

Diabetes Foundation Loses its Way (Michael Fumento, March 10, 2005)

The slick Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International flyer that appeared in Sunday newspapers throughout the country showed a little girl on monkey bars with her hand just inches from the next bar. "The cure is so close we can almost touch it," her accompanying mother says. Likewise, JDRF Chairwoman Mary Tyler Moore proclaimed in a recent TV commercial, "We are so close to finding a cure."

So wrong. JDRF is the world's largest juvenile diabetes philanthropy, distributing over $85 million in grants last year. Yet it supports no efforts that could lead to a cure any time soon for this blinding and crippling disease that afflicts as many as 1.7 million Americans. Instead it's become a lobby for controversial embryonic stem cell research and refuses to help fund the only study that could soon bring a cure.

Don't take my word for it. On the JDRF website's "stem cell information" page you'll find more links to ESC advocacy articles, editorials/Op-Eds and testimonies than a German wurst-maker has links.

"For further information" it refers readers to a single group – the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research. But the only research CAMR seeks to advance concerns embryos; indeed, it's the nation's largest ESC lobbying group. JDRF was one of the eight founding members of CAMR in 2000 and the 2001 CAMR chairman was Lawrence Soler, currently a vice-president with the JDRF.

The top item on JDRF's "issue information" page is "Embryonic Stem Cell Research," with subcategories like Progress with Embryonic Stem Cell Research. It also bashes what many see as an alternative that's both medically superior and carries no moral baggage – adult stem cells. Its "Limitations of Adult Stem Cell Research" link is packed with such disinformation as "Adult stem cells cannot be induced to develop into any cell type." In fact, since 2002 at least four different labs have published results indicating they can.

Now try the American Diabetes Association website. You won't see glorification of ESCs or bashing of ASCs. Those quaint folk only seem to care about diabetes, not politics.

We've been big fans of Mr. Fumento and his relentless debunking of junk and politicized science since reading his terrific book, The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, which accurately described how little risk there was to straight males and females in monogamous relationships with straight males of contracting AIDS and how the hysteria to the contrary was being fanned for purely political reasons, even though it was costing lives. A hundred years from now, when folks want to figure out how Public Health authorities made such a hash of the AIDS crisis, the only two books they'll really need are Mr. Fumento's and Randy Shilts's And the Band Played On.

Now Mr. Fumento is sounding the alarm about how another bout of politically driven medical disinformation may be distracting us from the most effective means of achieving real health breakthroughs, as various interest groups have coalesced around the demand that we pursue research on embryonic stem cells, which have proven pretty balky in this regard, to the exclusion of adult stem cells, which seem more promising, at least for now. It would be a real tragedy if the politics of what can only be described as the Death Lobby were to triumph over sound science again, a tragedy most of all for those who are counting on finding cures.

MORE:
Here are the e-mail addresses where the folks at Scripps Howard can be reached to complain about the spiking of Mr. Fumento's column:

Pamela Reeves: reevesp@shns.com

a Mr. Copeland : copelandp@shns.com

and a Mr. Timmons: timmonsk@shns.com

Or you can call Scripps Howard at:

202-408-1484

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 14, 2005 12:00 AM