Advanced Cell Technology Update
Life News has the details about the true “nature” of the corrections (plural) issued by medical journal Nature regarding what it published in conjunction with the “no embryos harmed” announcement of Advance Cell Technology Inc. (ATC) last week (bold is mine):
Nature Issues Corrections on Misleading Embryonic Stem Cell Research Study
August 31, 2006Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A leading medical journal has issued two “corrections” regarding misleading news releases concerning a study conducted by a biotech firm claiming to have created a morally acceptable method of obtaining embryonic stem cells.
Though Advanced Cell Technology said no human embryos were destroyed, in fact all were killed.
A press release from ACT and a statement from Nature on the article it published about the new method both said no human embryos were destroyed.
Ruth Francis, Nature’s senior press officer, explained the need for the corrections in an email to media outlets.
“We feel it necessary to explain that … the embryos that were used for these experiments did not remain intact,” she said.
Later, Francis would not tell the Philadelphia Inquirer why Nature didn’t make that clear in its initial press statement about the ACT paper.
“We are looking into the possibility of further clarification of this paper,” she told the newspaper.
During an interview with the Inquirer before the controversy erupted about the false claims, Advanced Cell Technology vice president Robert Lanza, senior author of the research paper, told the newspaper that “some of the embryos survived and were returned to frozen storage.”
On Wednesday, in a follow-up interview with the newspaper, he said he was referring to human embryos used in similar experiments, but not the ones touted in the Nature article he wrote.
Gee, I’m no scientific expert, but the last two paragraphs sure make it appear that ATC VP Lanza was caught red-handed playing fast and loose with the truth. There’s a three-letter word for that. And Nature may not even be done cleaning up Lanza’s mess.
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UPDATE, Sept. 1: California Stem Cell Report has advice for ACT on effective and accurate PR. With all due respect to CSCR, I believe ACT knows exactly what it is doing, and has thus far gotten what they want out of the whole episode.
UPDATE 2, Sept. 1: ACT stock had a recovery day Friday, closing up 10 cents at 71 cents after being as low as 56 cents during the trading day. ACT was down 25 cents (about 26%) for the week. The stock’s recovery may be due to the company fighting back a bit about its work, complete with the seemingly-required Bush-bashing:
Company officials protested that the fate of embryos in their laboratory has no bearing on the scientific value of the research that comes out of it. Using the techniques they developed, they said, future researchers can create stem cells without destroying embryos.
Having such a capability could be useful because U.S. law currently bans federal funding of any research that harms human embryos. In an August 2001 decision, President Bush allowed federal funding for research on the few dozen cell lines that had been created up to that point. But researchers say they need hundreds of lines to move the science forward.
“I think the degree of protest here is the result of the importance of this breakthrough,” said Ronald Green, chairman of Advanced Cell Technology’s ethics advisory board and a professor of religion at Dartmouth College. “If the president were to turn around tomorrow and authorize stem cell lines produced in this way, in two years’ time we could have three to four hundred stem cells lines.”
Other scientists have expressed reservations about the significance of the research, saying that it needs to be confirmed through replication.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Green conveniently forgets to mention that he and others in the industry can develop all the lines they wish — they just can’t do it using federal funds.
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Previous Posts:
- August 27 — Paging the SEC: Investigate Advanced Cell Technology
- August 28 — An Across-the-Board Chorus Blasts Advanced Cell Technology’s Claims
