After all these years, why can’t the media report even basic embryonic-stem-cell issues accurately?

We have been told by the media over and over again that federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research was somehow “banned.” Pure. Baloney.

Now, it’s PBS — NOVA, no less — that either doesn’t have reporters/editors capable of reporting facts, or who just assume that a continually repeated false meme is true.

In a story laudably reporting on the real promise of ethical stem-cell research, the supposed thwarting of embryonic-stem-cell research again rears its false and ugly head. From Nova Next’s “Stem Cells Finally Deliver, But Not on the Original Promise“:

Stem cells appeared to offer that potential, but when Congress banned federal funding in 1995 for research on embryos—and thus the development of new stem cell lines—scientists found their work had ground to a halt.

Pure crap.

The 1995 “ban” wasn’t a statute, but a budget item (Dickey-Wicker Amendment) aimed at preventing federal funding for the creation of embryos for research and the destruction of embryos. While controversial, it has been passed every year since — by Democratic, Republican, and mixed Congresses — and signed each year by Clinton, Bush, and Obama, respectively.

Human embryonic stem cells weren’t derived until 1998. That breakthrough sparked a big push for federal funding of the nascent field.

Bill Clinton got around the seeming impediment of Dickey-Wicker by requiring private funding to destroy the embryo. But he permitted full federal funding on the resulting embryonic-stem-cell line once the embryo was destroyed. That has been the law ever since.

Actual federal funding commenced after George W. Bush’s August 2001 executive order–so often railed against in the media and by ESCR advocates as a “ban.” In fact, Bush-didn’t prohibit federal funding at all, but it to funding research on stem cell lines already then in existence.

In fact, under Bush, the NIH paid out tens of millions each year to fund scientific research on human embryonic-stem-cell investigations.

Add the federal support, state support, and private funding, and billions were spent in funding during the Bush years – and more under Obama.

“Ground to a halt” my nose hairs.

Why do I care about such constant misreporting about an issue that is mostly yesterday’s controversy?

Generally, because we need media to report accurately about controversial public policy issues if we are to engage in true democratic deliberation.

More specifically, the constant and ubiquitous baloney-reporting on stem-cell issues furthers the falsehood that somehow ESCR was prevented from truly curing patients, when in reality,the CURES! CURES! CURES! promise was always hype aimed at opening the federal funding spigot.

Whatever one thinks about the ethics of ESCR — and I am clearly on record in that regard – the media owe the public accurate reporting. As too often happened, PBS failed in this instance.

P.S. Here’s another lapse: IPSC research on disease models, reported on in the story, is fulfilling that role in a way scientists once said only human cloning could achieve. More than worth a mention–and it validated Bush’s belief that scientists would find a way to do research on pluripotent stem cells that didn’t fracture societal comity.