HD Blog

First item, taken from USA Today frames the issue properly: "The Bush administration has limited federal funding of research on stem cells that results in the destruction of a living human embryo."

The second item is taken from the Courier-Post Online that, embarrassingly, goes the whole article without mentioning "federal funding" or "embryonic" and gives the impression that opposition is to all stem cell research. Truly bad journalism.

The next piece from Chris Mooney does mention "embryonic" and also makes the accurate point that that embryonic stem cells are unlikely to cure Alzheimers. There is room for debate on this, but I don't agree that embryonic stem cells could "yield a wealth of information about Alzheimers". But I also wouldn't rule out that stem cells, of either type, could help repair the brain from the damage done by Alzheimer's after a treatment is found.

The following piece concerning NIH and adult stem cells, also by Chris Mooney, is also accurate on the details of the debate.

A piece by Chris Mooney, again, quotes a LA Times story saying "federal restrictions on stem-cell research". (It really doesn't take that much ink to say "federal funding" and "embryonic research"!)

In the next one references a New York Times article that seems to believe that the only stem cells that exist are those that come from embryos. Here's the quote from the article "To cultivate the cell lines necessary for research, human embryos have to be destroyed." The article also doesn't mention that the federal limitation is on (lets say it together) "federal funding of embryonic stem cell research"

The final item mentions a study by the "non-profit and non-partisan" Results For America that shows support for stem cell research. I didn't look to see how the survey questions were worded but the article the results came from did manage to say "federal funding for embryonic stem cell research". Though they also managed to preface that with "major new restriction" which isn't accurate because there was no federal funding when the decision was announced by the Bush administration. What was new was what WAS allowed that wasn't allowed before then.

I really do hope that journalists start to get this right. Whether it is by ignorance or by choice, the question being debated (federal funding of embryonic stem cell research) should not be framed so inaccurately.