Posted on 03/11/2002 11:28:40 AM PST by xsysmgr
Wesley J. Smith [is] author of Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America. His currently at work on his next book, A Consumer's Guide to the Brave New World.here was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the media over the Pentagon's proposal to establish a disinformation center. Journalists, editorial writers, and talking heads waxed self-righteously eloquent, warning that truth must not become a casualty of the war on terror.
Would that they were as adamant about resisting the disinformation campaign still being waged by supporters of embryonic-stem-cell research (ESCR) and human cloning. Rarely has so much disinformation been peddled by so many as in this all-important moral and political struggle. But rather than insisting on being told the truth, the media, patient-advocacy groups, and many politicians have swallowed the obfuscation whole without even a trace of indigestion.
Such successful disingenuousness deserves special public recognition. So, here are the winners of the first annual "Smoke-and-Mirrors Awards," awarded to those advocates who blow the thickest smoke and mount the most confusing mirrors while advocating for Brave New World.
Propaganda Masking as Journalism Award of the Year: Joannie Fischer, reporter for U.S. News and World Report
Joanne Fisher's fawning cover story in the December 3, 2001, U.S. News and World Report reporting on Advanced Cell Technology's announcement that it had successfully cloned the first human embryo lacked even the pretense of objectivity or respect for moral and scientific arguments against human cloning. Not only did Fischer shamelessly boost ACT's key figures as worthy of inclusion in science's pantheon of historic heroes, but in eight pages of text she failed to interview one anti-cloning expert. (Fischer did briefly quote from a Wall Street Journal column by Francis Fukuyama. Beyond that, however, she unquestioningly allowed ACT spokespersons to depict cloning opponents as anti-abortion fanatics threatening our heroes with assassination.) For wide-eyed reportage and for swallowing whole the ridiculous assertion that there "is nothing else in all of medical research that is anywhere near this promising" as human cloning Fischer truly earned her Smoky. With reporters like her, who needs a PR firm?
Political Double-Talkers of the Year: Sens. Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter
There are too many co-winners of this award to list individually, so the judges decided to be bipartisan and present the award jointly to Senators Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) and Arlen Specter (R., Pa.). Harkin and Specter have cosponsored a bill designed to thwart S.1899 (Brownback, R., Kan.), legislation that would outlaw all human nuclear-cell-transplant cloning. (The Weldon bill, an identical measure, has already passed the House in a strongly bipartisan vote. President Bush has promised he will sign the measure should it reach his desk.) The Harkin/Specter bill would outlaw human "reproductive cloning" that is, bringing a human clone to a live birth. But it would explicitly legalize cloning for the manufacture of human embryos for use in research.
This is gold-plated doubletalk. Whether used for reproductive or research cloning, the cloning procedure is exactly the same.
Nuclear-cell-transfer cloning consists in removing the nucleus of an ovum and replacing it with genetic material from a somatic cell, such as is found in the skin. The genetically modified egg is then stimulated into embryonic growth using an electrical charge. Once that is done successfully whether the resulting embryo is used for reproductive or research purposes the act of cloning is complete.
If Harkin and Specter really want to prevent the live birth of a human clone, they must support the Brownback bill. Here's why: Cloning advocates argue that "therapeutic cloning" must remain legal so that researchers can learn how to clone embryos to the "blastocyst" stage, when their stem cells can be extracted. Not coincidentally, in vitro embryos are generally implanted in IVF fertility procedures at the blastocyst stage. Once researchers learn how to maintain human-clone blastocysts, they will be ready to try implantation. At this point, reproductive cloning would be quickly relabeled by cloning advocates as just another "reproductive technology." Soon, lawsuits would be filed to overturn the reproductive-cloning ban as an unconstitutional restriction on the fundamental right to procreate. Meanwhile, intense efforts would be made to change the law to allow clone live births. And in any event, a scientist would eventually defy the law and implant a clone embryo in the womb of a woman wishing to go down in history as the birth mother of the first clone baby. Thus, merely outlawing reproductive cloning would almost without question lead to the birth of the first human clone.
Of course, Harkin, Specter, and the other legislators who support this duplicitous approach know this perfectly well. But voting to ban reproductive cloning while legalizing research cloning allows them to be all things to all people. On one hand, their vote against reproductive cloning would please the majority of their constituents who, polls show, oppose cloning human life. But since they would actually be voting to legalize human cloning on condition that the clone be killed rather than implanted they would please high rollers in the biotech industry, as well as patient-advocacy groups.
Political Science Award of the Year: National Academy of Sciences
Modern scientists portray themselves as objective seekers after factual truth. Thus, when a scientific organization issues an opinion, it is typically presented as being above politics, or (in the words of Joe Friday of Dragnet fame) as presenting "just the facts."
In the cloning debate, that presumption can be pure poppycock. Often, allegedly scientific research reports are actually thinly disguised political-advocacy texts. And no organized scientific group has been so overtly political in the cloning debate as the National Academy of Sciences, which recently issued a report calling for a legal ban on reproductive cloning but urging that research cloning be made expressly legal. Moreover, even though the act of cloning is the same for both research and reproductive cloning, the NAS urged that the research cloning no longer be called cloning but rather "nuclear cell transplant to produce stem cells." Why? By doing away with the C-word and replacing it with a mind-numbing phrase, the NAS hopes to overcome popular resistance to cloning. But calling the same procedure "cloning" in one context and "nuclear cell transplant to produce stem cells" in another isn't science. It's propaganda.
Creator of the False Distinction of the Year: Sen. Orrin Hatch
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) claims to be "pro-life." The fundamental principle of pro-life advocacy is that human life begins at conception. But last year, during the embryonic-stem-cell debate, Hatch came out in support of ESCR because, he said, "life begins in a womb not a refrigerator."
The idea that a human can begin only in a womb is plainly wrong from a scientific perspective. Biologically, an individual human life created through fertilization commences as soon as sperm has merged with egg. This is true whether the "conception" occurs in a woman's Fallopian tube or a lab petri dish.
Once the embryo exists, it is a new member of the human species, possessing a unique genetic makeup and its own gender. Whether that human life will live long enough to become a born baby is a matter of environment, time, and development. But basing life's existence on geography as Hatch does is the falsest of false distinctions.
Biological Sciences Dunce of the Year: Sen. Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) is pushing a bill that would not only explicitly legalize human cloning for use in experiments, but would prevent the states from banning research cloning in their respective jurisdictions. On February 24, 2002, Feinstein defended her bill on Meet the Press, stating that the legislation would "clearly make it illegal to inject one of these stem cells into a woman's uterus" to create a pregnancy. But implanting a stem cell in a uterus would no more make a woman pregnant than implanting a skin cell would. However, implanting a cloned embryo likely to occur if research cloning remains legal could make a woman pregnant. It's time to go back to Biology 101, Senator Feinstein.
Tantrum of the Year: Netscape founder Jim Clark
In September, multi-billionaire Jim Clark suspended a pledged $68 million research grant to Stanford University. Why renege on such an important promise? Because President Bush issued an executive order limiting federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research. Hyperbolically accusing ESCR opponents of threatening America with a new "dark ages" in medical research, Clark kicked his feet in protest on the op-ed page of the New York Times, suspended a large part of the pledged grant to Stanford, then took his football and went home.
Underreporting Adult Stem-Cell Research Successes: The American Media
Type I Diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the body's white blood cells attack its own organs and tissues. Promoters of research cloning and ESCR hope to begin to tackle this malady in ten years, using embryonic stem cells. Yet on July 19, 2001, the Harvard University Gazette reported that Type I diabetes in mice had been "permanently reversed" using adult stem cells. The technique involved destroying the tissues causing the disease, allowing the body's adult stem cells to rebuild normal organs and tissues in the affected mice. The experiment was so successful that human trials are now planned. If embryonic stem cells had achieved this stunning success, banner headlines would have announced it to the world. Yet none of the major media outlets in America bothered to report this important story.
Proof that the Slippery Slope Is Real: Political columnist Ellen Goodman
In a January 17, 1980, column, syndicated-columnist Ellen Goodman came to the support of the first medical clinic that would use IVF procedures to help women become pregnant. The procedure was very controversial at the time because it could lead to the objectification of human embryos. Responding to these concerns, Goodman wrote:
A fear of many protesting the opening of this clinic is that doctors will fertilize myriad eggs and discard the "extras" and the abnormal, as if they were no more meaningful than a dish of caviar. But this fear seems largely unwarranted.
Goodman further opined:
Now we have to watch the development of this technology willing to see it grow in the right direction and ready to say no.
Twenty years later, and human embryos created for IVF, but due to be discarded as excess, are seen by many as a natural resource for use in ESCR. Now that the former critics' worst fears have come to pass, is Goodman ready to recant? No. Despite having been wrong IVF embryos now are discarded like so much caviar Goodman now supports both ESCR and research cloning.
Special Award: Telling It Like It Really Is Award: Geron Corp.Not every statement by true believers in ESCR or cloning is disingenuous. On occasion, advocates can be surprisingly candid. Such truthtelling deserves a special Tell It Like It Really Is Award, or the "Isy."
This year's Isy goes to the Geron Corporation of Menlo Park, Calif. In October 2001, the biotech company, a leader in ESCR, announced that it had developed a way to maintain embryonic stem cells without having to use mice feeder cells a crucial breakthrough, the company claimed, due to strict federal regulatory restrictions on the use of animal tissues. Illustrating vividly the dehumanization that follows when human life is viewed as a mere natural resource, Geron's press release hailed the breakthrough:
The finding greatly facilitates the development of scalable manufacturing processes to enable commercialization of hES (human-embryonic-stem) cell-based products." (Emphasis added.)
The destruction of human life described as a manufacturing process leading to human-based "products" just as if embryos were penicillin mold or a corn crop. Now, that's telling it like it really is!
The Senate will begin debating S. 1899 in earnest in a few weeks. If the Brownback bill fails, it will be in large part thanks to disingenuousness in advocacy. No doubt cloning propagandists are already planning their next Smoky-winning moves.
PC misinformation on cloning is a major problem.
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