Kudos to Chicago Tribune

I was flying home from a speaking gig in Kentucky yesterday and at Chicago/O’Hare, I purchased a Sunday Chicago Tribune. There, on the front page, was a great story on the power of umbilical cord blood stem cells to treat terrible diseases. Good for the Tribune. As I have written previously, too often, these amazing stories are either not reported, or blandly presented on inside pages, in the mainstream media. Perhaps the dam is beginning to break.

This being noted, a good story here and there is insufficient to break through the Big Biotech/Media propaganda blitz extolling the wonders of therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem cells as superior to adult/umbilical cord blood stem cells. In my years of public advocacy, I have learned that repitition is the key to getting the attention of the mass of the population that are not news junkies and don’t spend their lives focusing intently on various controversies. At some point, I believe, stories like the Tribune’s will be the rule rather than the exception. The treatments most likely to come on-line sooner, and at less cost, are non embryonic—and all without the moral baggage.