If At First You Don’t Succeed, Lie, Lie Again

Stem cell researchers have announced an exciting technique that may one day be used to treat victims of Parkinson’s. And once again conservative apologists charge into the fray over embryonic stem cells and get it dead wrong.

IBD — Aside from their medical promise, this discovery and its promising application serve as vindication of President Bush’s view that such research can continue without the ethical and moral baggage of using human embryos.

This new development came on the heels of results released late last year by stem cell pioneer Dr. James Thomson and a Japanese team. Back then the usual suspects also rushed in to praise George Bush, until a disgusted Thomson smacked them down:

NYT — Dr. Thomson estimated that the political controversy and the President’s restrictions on federal funding have actually set the field back four to five years …In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post on December 3, Dr. Thomson and Alan Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, emphasized that the breakthrough was achieved “despite [political] restrictions,” not because of them.

Investors Business Daily prides itself on bringing readers critical information on financial markets and cutting edge investment opportunities around the world. Stem cell research here and abroad may well lead to some of the most revolutionary, lucrative treatments since the advent of antibiotics. And yet here we have what appears to be the editorial staff of IBD publishing a piece that is riddled from start to finish with errors so fundamental a high school student could uncover them with a few minutes on Google. Even the IBD header, which states that scientists ‘didn’t need human embryos’ to make these discoveries is flat wrong.

Dr. Thomson also stressed that neither his nor the Japanese work could have been performed were it not for the knowledge gained over the past decade in human embryonic stem cell research — the very research that Mr. Bush has striven mightily to limit.

The editors/author were either careless to a degree that approaches negligance, or intentionally misled their readers about a dazzling develpoment in biotechonolgy because they value a discredited conservative talking point over factual reporting. Which begs the question: just who are the editors at IBD serving, investors or the Bush administration?

Source Daily Kos

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