The first wave of stories on the what of the news over ersatz embryonic stem cells from reprogrammed skin cells is now being followed quickly by the so-what analyses. So far, the dominant impression is of an exultant feeling – most everybody (politicians particularly) is glad that ethical stuff is out of the picture; we’re on to ameliorating myriad genetic and other diseases with bespoke tissue farms. Need a new liver? Leave a snip of derma and come back in a few weeks.
That is, of course, a perfectly good angle. Over at that sourpuss “Framing Science” site, however, media and culture pundit-professor Matthew Nesbit raises his hand. His take (paraphrasing here): all the celebratory fireworks simply vindicate the position of the Christian right and its ethical allies that research on embryos is immoral. He asks, in essence, is this new, clearly important set of lab results really a win-win solution? Researchers who still feel they must have embryonic tissues to make basic progress in biology, particularly in areas unrelated to cloning new organs, will have far fewer political allies. Which is to say, across broad ethical, religious, and scientific philosophy spectra, a shared determination has arisen that we gotta find a way not to mess with embryos and if we do that’s a victory for science. Some will shake their heads at this spectacle of group think. Nesbit links to several of the thumbsuckers that already are out. Point taken, but it seems to The Tracker that several outlets’ analyses do report the new landscape with commendable nuance so soon after the fact.
Among the analyses at major outlets:
Wash. Post Michael Abramowitz; Rick Weiss write this could defuse the acrimonious political debate over embryonic stem cells ;
At the NYTimes Sheryl Gay Stolberg has a report suggesting this is hardly the end of the ethical debate. She adds, “each side can now say it has fruitful research to pursue” and notes that the development is a tremendous boost for what, as one aide put it, the president’s vision. Stolberg lays out well the prospects for a lot more wrangling over embryo research ;
Chicago Tribune Jeremy Manier story covers all the bases, including toward the bottom the persistence of a rocky political path for embryonic research. Nice quote: “Every time we get a headline line this, some policymakers say, ‘OK, now we can stop funding embryonic research, and you guys can get jobs at McDonalds..'” ;
Newsday Delthia Ricks focusses only on the applied-science impact, writing researchers are “now poised (for) an imaginitive line of research free from thorny ethical restraints.”
Los Angeles Times Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar drops the second shoe right at the top: “The political controversy over restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research is unlikely to end…” ;
AP Malcolm Ritter quotes a Catholic organization’s spokesman as calling this a win-win result, and another rep. of a conservative Christian group as saying scientists should thank pro-life voices for pushing them to get alternatives. His kicker’s source says both embryo and other means to the end are still in play, however ;
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel John Fauber (Holy grail alert!) handles the basic news well, and quickly enough gets to the spreading worry among scientists that embryonic stem cell research may be abandoned by many, wiping out promising work now underway;
Toronto Globe and Mail Anne McIlroy focusses on the Japanese and U. Wisconsin team’s specific work, not much on ethics, but well worth noting today anyway. She shows a talent for the particular that brings a work’s immediacy home for the reader. Not just skin cells, she writes in the lede, but those from one woman’s face, and others from baby boys’ foreskins ;
Hartford Courant William Hathaway calls it “biological and political magic (that evades) the moral and ethical stumbling block in stem cell research in the United States..” But he somewhat reverses course deeper, saying of ethical debate “It will not, however, end it. The revolutionary new approach may make a casualty of human embryo cloning..” He includes other suggestions of scientists dismayed at the prospect of the door closing even tighter on embryo research;
The Australian Leigh Dayton reports a move already underway there to ban embryo research outright, US style (unclear whether it’d just apply, as in US, to federally paid-for studies). His lead reports that many are warning against such a move to outlaw most human embryo research.
and at The Age (Australia), where the embargo got busted (somebody had to do it), an Editorial salutes the work for “taking a great deal of heat out of the argument” over use of embryos. True enough, but it tacitly reflects a tunnel-vision equation of therapeutic cloning with all embryonic research.
Pic source;
-CP
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