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 here
was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the media over the Pentagon's
proposal to establish a disinformation center. Journalists, editorial
writers, and talking heads waxed self-righteously eloquent, warning
that truth must not become a casualty of the war on terror.
Would that
they were as adamant about resisting the disinformation campaign
still being waged by supporters of embryonic-stem-cell research
(ESCR) and human cloning. Rarely has so much disinformation been
peddled by so many as in this all-important moral and political
struggle. But rather than insisting on being told the truth, the
media, patient-advocacy groups, and many politicians have swallowed
the obfuscation whole — without even a trace of indigestion.
Such successful
disingenuousness deserves special public recognition. So, here are
the winners of the first annual "Smoke-and-Mirrors Awards,"
awarded to those advocates who blow the thickest smoke and mount
the most confusing mirrors while advocating for Brave New World.
Propaganda
Masking as Journalism Award of the Year: Joannie Fischer, reporter
for U.S. News and World Report
Joanne Fisher's
fawning cover story in the December 3, 2001, U.S. News and World
Report — reporting on Advanced Cell Technology's announcement
that it had successfully cloned the first human embryo — lacked
even the pretense of objectivity or respect for moral and scientific
arguments against human cloning. Not only did Fischer shamelessly
boost ACT's key figures as worthy of inclusion in science's pantheon
of historic heroes, but in eight pages of text she failed
to interview one anti-cloning expert. (Fischer did briefly
quote from a Wall Street Journal column by Francis Fukuyama.
Beyond that, however, she unquestioningly allowed ACT spokespersons
to depict cloning opponents as anti-abortion fanatics threatening
our heroes with assassination.) For wide-eyed reportage — and
for swallowing whole the ridiculous assertion that there "is
nothing else in all of medical research that is anywhere near this
promising" as human cloning — Fischer truly earned her
Smoky. With reporters like her, who needs a PR firm?
Political
Double-Talkers of the Year: Sens. Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter
There are too
many co-winners of this award to list individually, so the judges
decided to be bipartisan and present the award jointly to Senators
Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) and Arlen Specter (R., Pa.). Harkin and Specter
have cosponsored a bill designed to thwart S.1899 (Brownback, R.,
Kan.), legislation that would outlaw all human nuclear-cell-transplant
cloning. (The Weldon bill, an identical measure, has already passed
the House in a strongly bipartisan vote. President Bush has promised
he will sign the measure should it reach his desk.) The Harkin/Specter
bill would outlaw human "reproductive cloning" —
that is, bringing a human clone to a live birth. But it would explicitly
legalize cloning for the manufacture of human embryos for use in
research.
This is gold-plated
doubletalk. Whether used for reproductive or research cloning, the
cloning procedure is exactly the same.
Nuclear-cell-transfer
cloning consists in removing the nucleus of an ovum and replacing
it with genetic material from a somatic cell, such as is found in
the skin. The genetically modified egg is then stimulated into embryonic
growth using an electrical charge. Once that is done successfully
— whether the resulting embryo is used for reproductive or
research purposes — the act of cloning is complete.
If Harkin and
Specter really want to prevent the live birth of a human clone,
they must support the Brownback bill. Here's why: Cloning advocates
argue that "therapeutic cloning" must remain legal so
that researchers can learn how to clone embryos to the "blastocyst"
stage, when their stem cells can be extracted. Not coincidentally,
in vitro embryos are generally implanted in IVF fertility procedures
at the blastocyst stage. Once researchers learn how to maintain
human-clone blastocysts, they will be ready to try implantation.
At this point, reproductive cloning would be quickly relabeled by
cloning advocates as just another "reproductive technology."
Soon, lawsuits would be filed to overturn the reproductive-cloning
ban as an unconstitutional restriction on the fundamental right
to procreate. Meanwhile, intense efforts would be made to change
the law to allow clone live births. And in any event, a scientist
would eventually defy the law and implant a clone embryo in the
womb of a woman wishing to go down in history as the birth mother
of the first clone baby. Thus, merely outlawing reproductive cloning
would almost without question lead to the birth of the first human
clone.
Of course,
Harkin, Specter, and the other legislators who support this duplicitous
approach know this perfectly well. But voting to ban reproductive
cloning while legalizing research cloning allows them to be all
things to all people. On one hand, their vote against reproductive
cloning would please the majority of their constituents who, polls
show, oppose cloning human life. But since they would actually be
voting to legalize human cloning — on condition that the clone
be killed rather than implanted — they would please high rollers
in the biotech industry, as well as patient-advocacy groups.
Political
Science Award of the Year: National Academy of Sciences
Modern scientists
portray themselves as objective seekers after factual truth. Thus,
when a scientific organization issues an opinion, it is typically
presented as being above politics, or (in the words of Joe Friday
of Dragnet fame) as presenting "just the facts."
In the cloning
debate, that presumption can be pure poppycock. Often, allegedly
scientific research reports are actually thinly disguised political-advocacy
texts. And no organized scientific group has been so overtly political
in the cloning debate as the National Academy of Sciences, which
recently issued a report calling for a legal ban on reproductive
cloning but urging that research cloning be made expressly legal.
Moreover, even though the act of cloning is the same for both research
and reproductive cloning, the NAS urged that the research cloning
no longer be called cloning but rather "nuclear cell transplant
to produce stem cells." Why? By doing away with the C-word
and replacing it with a mind-numbing phrase, the NAS hopes to overcome
popular resistance to cloning. But calling the same procedure "cloning"
in one context and "nuclear cell transplant to produce stem
cells" in another isn't science. It's propaganda.
Creator
of the False Distinction of the Year: Sen. Orrin Hatch
Sen. Orrin
Hatch (R., Utah) claims to be "pro-life." The fundamental
principle of pro-life advocacy is that human life begins at conception.
But last year, during the embryonic-stem-cell debate, Hatch came
out in support of ESCR because, he said, "life begins in a
womb not a refrigerator."
The idea that
a human can begin only in a womb is plainly wrong from a scientific
perspective. Biologically, an individual human life created through
fertilization commences as soon as sperm has merged with egg. This
is true whether the "conception" occurs in a woman's Fallopian
tube or a lab petri dish.
Once the embryo
exists, it is a new member of the human species, possessing a unique
genetic makeup and its own gender. Whether that human life will
live long enough to become a born baby is a matter of environment,
time, and development. But basing life's existence on geography
— as Hatch does — is the falsest of false distinctions.
Biological
Sciences Dunce of the Year: Sen. Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Feinstein
(D., Calif.) is pushing a bill that would not only explicitly legalize
human cloning for use in experiments, but would prevent the states
from banning research cloning in their respective jurisdictions.
On February 24, 2002, Feinstein defended her bill on Meet the
Press, stating that the legislation would "clearly make
it illegal to inject one of these stem cells into a woman's uterus"
to create a pregnancy. But implanting a stem cell in a uterus
would no more make a woman pregnant than implanting a skin cell
would. However, implanting a cloned embryo — likely to occur
if research cloning remains legal — could make a woman pregnant.
It's time to go back to Biology 101, Senator Feinstein.
Tantrum
of the Year: Netscape founder Jim Clark
In September,
multi-billionaire Jim Clark suspended a pledged $68 million research
grant to Stanford University. Why renege on such an important promise?
Because President Bush issued an executive order limiting federal
funding of embryonic-stem-cell research. Hyperbolically accusing
ESCR opponents of threatening America with a new "dark ages"
in medical research, Clark kicked his feet in protest on the op-ed
page of the New York Times, suspended a large part of the
pledged grant to Stanford, then took his football and went home.
Underreporting
Adult Stem-Cell Research Successes: The American Media
Type I Diabetes
is an autoimmune disease in which the body's white blood cells attack
its own organs and tissues. Promoters of research cloning and ESCR
hope to begin to tackle this malady in ten years, using embryonic
stem cells. Yet on July 19, 2001, the Harvard University Gazette
reported that Type I diabetes in mice had been "permanently
reversed" using adult stem cells. The technique involved destroying
the tissues causing the disease, allowing the body's adult stem
cells to rebuild normal organs and tissues in the affected mice.
The experiment was so successful that human trials are now planned.
If embryonic stem cells had achieved this stunning success, banner
headlines would have announced it to the world. Yet none
of the major media outlets in America bothered to report this important
story.
Proof that
the Slippery Slope Is Real: Political columnist Ellen Goodman
In a January
17, 1980, column, syndicated-columnist Ellen Goodman came to the
support of the first medical clinic that would use IVF procedures
to help women become pregnant. The procedure was very controversial
at the time because it could lead to the objectification of human
embryos. Responding to these concerns, Goodman wrote:
A fear of
many protesting the opening of this clinic is that doctors will
fertilize myriad eggs and discard the "extras" and the
abnormal, as if they were no more meaningful than a dish of caviar.
But this fear seems largely unwarranted.
Goodman further
opined:
Now we have
to watch the development of this technology — willing to
see it grow in the right direction and ready to say no.
Twenty years
later, and human embryos created for IVF, but due to be discarded
as excess, are seen by many as a natural resource for use in ESCR.
Now that the former critics' worst fears have come to pass, is Goodman
ready to recant? No. Despite having been wrong — IVF embryos
now are discarded like so much caviar — Goodman now
supports both ESCR and research cloning.
Special Award: Telling It Like It Really Is Award: Geron
Corp.
Not every statement
by true believers in ESCR or cloning is disingenuous. On occasion,
advocates can be surprisingly candid. Such truthtelling deserves
a special Tell It Like It Really Is Award, or the "Isy."
This year's
Isy goes to the Geron Corporation of Menlo Park, Calif. In October
2001, the biotech company, a leader in ESCR, announced that it had
developed a way to maintain embryonic stem cells without having
to use mice feeder cells — a crucial breakthrough, the company
claimed, due to strict federal regulatory restrictions on the use
of animal tissues. Illustrating vividly the dehumanization that
follows when human life is viewed as a mere natural resource, Geron's
press release hailed the breakthrough:
The finding
greatly facilitates the development of scalable manufacturing
processes to enable commercialization of hES (human-embryonic-stem)
cell-based products." (Emphasis added.)
The destruction
of human life described as a manufacturing process leading to human-based
"products" — just as if embryos were penicillin mold
or a corn crop. Now, that's telling it like it really is!
The Senate
will begin debating S. 1899 in earnest in a few weeks. If the Brownback
bill fails, it will be in large part thanks to disingenuousness
in advocacy. No doubt cloning propagandists are already planning
their next Smoky-winning moves.
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