Yesterday, I wrote about a diabetes human trial using adult stem cells in which some of the patients were able to go off insulin. I predicted at the time that it wouldn’t make big time headlines—as would happen if the exact same achievement happened with human patients using embryonic stem cells: From my blog:
We know that if this were an embryonic stem cell success, the headlines would swamp reportage of the financial crisis. But this is the wrong kind of stem cell success, so I expect, at most, muted coverage.
That’s precisely what it received, muted coverage. New York Times; crickets chirping. Ditto, the Washington Post. And ditto again, the L.A. Times. No Boston Globe. No San Francisco Chronicle. Some on-line coverage in health and science publications. CNN had a small story. Time did too, not big though. Just what I expected. Hey, it did make the Times of India!
You see, successful human treatments don’t count as news if they are from adult stem cells. That doesn’t fit the media narrative that ESCR is the future. That is why a prospective Geron ESC human trial that might or might not work, got more coverage than these stories of an actual major success did put together.
Pathetic, biased, non journalism. Just pathetic.
