Media Continue to Misreport ACT Story

This is so typical: The San Francisco Business Times has a three paragraph story about ACT garnering $13 million in the wake of its hyped ESCR experiment. First, the story states that ACT is an Alameda, California company. In actuality, it is a Worcester, MA company that opened a California office in the hope of grabbing some Proposition 71 money. (Hopefully, this strategy will be in vain. But if the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine tries to give borrowed California money to ACT, just watch the lawsuits fly.)

Second, the reporter writes about ACT getting in trouble with Senators Arlen Specter and Tom Harkin for misleading the public about its experiment, stating that “though the method Advanced Cell reported uses just one cell from an embryo, thus leaving it free to develop, the tests it used actually destroyed embryos.”

This is false, too. The actual experiment did not use just one cell from the embryo, but 4-7 cells kept in close proximity so they could communicate with each other. Absent the communication, it may well be that no stem cells would have been derived.

Two mistakes in three short paragraphs; unfortunately par for the course on this issue. Well, at least the reporter got the money part right.