More Media Stem Cell Ignorance on Display

The Star Ledger (“the voice of New Jersey”) has an ESCR story out, byline Kitta MacPherson, which is, as usual, biased in the direction of promoting ESCR. A study has been published in Nature reporting that human embryonic stem cells in mice effectively treated Sandhoff disease, a malady similar to Tay Sachs and other such neurological disorders. Much more is made of the story than is warranted, as I will explain below. However, I think the bias comes from ignorance rather than the reporter’s intent. A general staff reporter will naturally rely on the scientists for the facts—which in these highly politicized days will not always result in accurate reporting.

MacPherson got the usual spin. Check this out from the story: “Everybody is always saying to us, ‘Well, you guys studying the human embryonic stem cells, you haven’t benefited anyone yet,’” said Evan Snyder, a neuroscientist who has published breakthrough papers on both embryonic and adult stem cells. “Well, this is it.” Except, it isn’t. The study was done in rodents, not people. Surely, a neuroscientist (and a staff journalist, for that matter), knows that a mouse made better is not the same thing as a human made better. Indeed, what works in animal models does not always work in humans.

But note this part of the story. The scientists used both adult and embryonic stem cells in their experiments, with interesting results: The international team, headed by Snyder, a physician-scientist at the Burnham Institute in California, also compared the effectiveness of embryonic stem cells versus the “adult” variety and found them to be equally effective. In other words, in mice adult stem cells were just as therapeutic as embryonic! That should have been the headline and the story’s emphasis. Moreover, if this is so, why use ESCs in human trials, as these scientists want to do, given their propensity to cause tumors and their ethical contentiousness?

Chalk up another hyped story of a purported embryonic stem cell success that is less then advertised, and which actually boosts the argument in favor of adult stem cell research.