White House Plays Politics, Again, with Science;Just One Lie After Another...

The White House is playing politics with science in a highly deceptive way. No one knows if adult stem cells or fetal cells will perform in the same way as embryonic stem cells. No one knows much of anything about any of the science because it is all new. It is true that, contrary to the report, Dr. Atala has said that federal funding for embryonic stem cell research ought proceed for the same reasons I have just given. The notion that there are viable alternatives to embryonic stem cell research has about as much substance as earlier Presidential statements that all embryos now frozen in U.S. IVF clinics could find couples willing to adopt them.
-Art Caplan

[The Ridiculous Report]

Bob Novak Did Not Take Science in College

Hurlbut is back again. The science is bad. The ability to 'prove' to a prolifer's complete satisfaction that a disabled embryo is truly disabled is non-existent (they do not believe that now about cloned human embryos or genetically defective embryos that can be identified today through PGD as incapable of development). But, still this sort of pseudoscience is receiving attention. Stranger still, note McCugh's absolutely bizarre argument against Hurlburt:

The only clear criticism on the council came from Dr. Paul McHugh, psychiatry department chairman at Johns Hopkins University. He warned that Hurlbut could be making a "hybrid which would be super-human in some kind of way." Hurlbut responded: "You create an entity that never rises to the level of what can properly be called a living being." McHugh suggested Hurlbut was making "a doomed hybrid" that would not be permitted to become a human being. "Not doomed," responded Hurlbut, "Only doomed if it's alive first."

This whole discussion is straight out of a the Salem witch trials. - Arthur Caplan

New England Journal Editorial: Good Luck Dodging Stem Cell Science with the Hurlbut Trick

I've already been awfully critical of William Hurlbut's idea that the stem cell debate can be obviated by an artful dodge in embryo creation. I noted too that just a few days after Hurlbut's idea was celebrated by the superconservative religious scholars whom he had bless his idea, they turned on him. Today the circle is truly complete, as scientists put to rest the idea that Hurlbut has figured out what counts as an embryo: New England Journal of Medicine has today published an editorial entitled "Altered Nuclear Transfer in Stem-Cell Research * A Flawed Proposal" by Melton, Daley and Jennings, that reads in part:

Hurlbut's argument for the ethical superiority of altered nuclear transfer rests on a flawed scientific assumption. He argues, on the basis of supposed insights from systems biology, that it is acceptable to destroy a CDX2 mutant embryo but not a normal embryo, because the former has "no inherent principle of unity, no coherent drive in the direction of the mature human form." But these are ill-defined concepts with no clear biologic meaning, and an alternative interpretation would be that embryos lacking CDX2 develop normally until CDX2 function is required, at which point they die. Philosophers may debate these and other interpretations. We see no basis for concluding that the action of CDX2 (or indeed any other gene) represents a transition point at which a human embryo acquires moral status.

-GM

Professor Hurlbut, Your 15 Minutes are Up

LifeSite is a sort of barometer for the day to day pulse of the anti-abortion community, and from the very moment that William Hurlbut floated his dramatic new plan to save us all from the terror of destroying frozen embryos it was clear that, as we foretold, the clock had started on his poorly thought-out "work-around" for stem cells: intentionally producing disabled embryos. True, for a bit it looked like Leon Kass would push Hurlbut's idea into the fore, with his announcement that the President's bioethics commission would be discussing it (and other ideas), and with his subsequent claim that Hurlbut's idea could save us all from having to debate stem cell ethics any longer. Catholic and protestant fundamentalist leaders jumped for joy. But it was only a matter of time before even the 'pro-life' community would wake up to realize that embracing Hurlbut's half-baked neoscientific plan meant doing all sorts of things that amount to what they typically term "playing God."

And so, exactly eight days after it showered Hurlbut with adoration for saving the tiny people, the pro-life lobby has officially turned on Professor Hurlbut for crimes against the little embryos. One biologist interviewed for the "hang hurlbut" piece in LifeSite today puts their indictment of him squarely: "...the process would not create an unknown 'new entity,' but a severely disabled, cloned human being." The anti-abortion people even have an excuse for embracing Hurlbut: they were too dizzied by all that complicated science stuff: "Possibly due to the extremely rarified nature of the technical language, few reservations were raised at the meeting, even by the pro-life Catholics present."

In Brief

I'm at a grant meeting this week in New York so comments will be limited to news analysis this week.

A few interesting things out today:

A followup inquiry in Britain on its military's tests on service members during the 20th century is revealing:

The hearing was told how at 10.17 a.m. on the morning of May 6, 1953, Porton Down scientists had applied the liquid nerve gas on to the arms of Maddison and five others in a sealed gas chamber. After 20 minutes, Maddison complained that he was feeling ill. Soon after he slumped over the table and was carried out of the chamber and taken to Porton’s hospital, where he died at 11.00 a.m. The inquest examined what steps Porton took to ensure the safety of the human “guinea pigs”, but was supposed to take into account the differing “ethical climate” of the early 1950s and the “paranoid pressure” generated by the Cold War.

Another chronicle of Hurlbut's tempest in a teapot solution to stem cell ethics debates, this time from Religion News Service.

Baroness Warnock, described in Times online as Britain's leading medical ethics expert, spoke in defense of the proposed 'mental capacity bill', which would simplify euthanasia in Britain (or so many say). Warnock: "I don't see what is so horrible about the motive of not wanting to be an increasing nuisance." Needless to say, lots of people didn't like her comments.

Who will lead the California stem cell program? San Francisco Chronicle reports that it might be a real estate tycoon, Robert Kline. Also in the pool: Michael Friedman, CEO of City of Hope, and former UC president Richard Atkinson, a cognitive scientist. Weren't any actors available?

You knew that Ob-Gyns are sued quite frequently. But in Maryland, 70% have been sued at some point in their practice, bringing average insurance premiums to $150,000 per year. Maryland is typical for the U.S..

A profile of Vanderbilt's Pediatric Advanced Comfort Team is interesting. Mark Bliton of Vanderbilt is quoted.

Boston Globe does a great job on the sports steroids issue.

A Man in Search of an Audience

Updated 12/5, 12/9 (We just can't slow this story down!): The Culture of Life people reported 12/1 on the news that the stem cell debate will soon be 'solved':

A member of the President's Council on Bioethics believes he may have found a way to obtain stem cells with the same potential as embryonic stem cells without creating or destroying a human embryo.

At last, a brilliant idea for getting around the big problem with embryonic stem cell research. It comes from President's Council on Bioethics member William Hurlbut, who constantly complains that those who favor embryonic stem cell research are - his term - "not morally serious" enough (take a listen). But he's had his idea vetted by "prominent Catholic clerics and other ethicists," to see if the technology he proposes is morally acceptable. The idea? Gushes the prolife newsletter:

in Hurlbut's method the gene responsible for creating the placenta is turned off. Hurlbut contends that this prevents an embryo from ever being created. But like traditional cloning, the egg still generates inner cell mass, or the "blank" cells, that some scientist believe have the greatest research potential. The [Boston] Globe reports that parts of the technique are currently being performed on mice.

Sounds great, right? It even sounds oddly familiar, probably. That is because it has been proposed in several forms by at least a dozen scientists who actually work in the area, and published in (among other places) Nature, although not by Hurlbut. Some of the papers are catching on to the idea that maybe the suggestion isn't so novel. But Hurlbut thinks his solution is important and scientifically significant, and conservatives are everywhere trumpeting the significant scientific breakthrough.

There's just one problem with taking him at face value: He has no publications in stem cell biology, ethics, theology or any part of clinical IVF. Nor is he, an MD, in clinical practice in that or any other area. Stanford faculty who have asked the president of that institution to release him point out that he has allowed and personally encouraged the description of him as a "Stanford scientist."

Hurlbut bases the moral utility of his claim on the fact that he vetted it with priests

The Boston Globe covered his theory, and right to lifers are beside themselves with joy at the morally serious solution. (UPDATE: Actually, some of the pro-life leaders are beginning to see the fix Hurlbut's idea puts them in) But there are many, many problems with Hurlbut's claims that even a visit to the Pope won't fix: 1) he makes assumptions about what counts as an embryo, a matter on which no ten embryo researchers agree, 2) he thus makes assumptions about when the destruction of embryonic material would count as destruction of an embryo, a person, or a human life for either scientists or clerics, 3) he makes no effort whatever to describe why his proposal is somehow less objectionable than other nuclear transfer technologies that he has campaigned against so vigerously.

UPDATE: Washington Post reports that Hurlbut's idea was mocked by a visiting scientist at the council, but that nonetheless the council is trading on the prominence afforded to it by Hurlbut's "big ticket idea," and as a direct result Leon Kass did in fact hold hearings on "solutions" to the stem cell problem, which (surprisingly to me, anyway) were hailed by Kass himself (chair) as important stuff. One might have guessed that Professor Kass would be a bit embarrassed that his handpicked council would advance ideas as potentially repugnant (following his analysis in his own writing) as Hurlbut's, designed to sidestep rather than engage a debate. And Kass does try his best to make the ideas sound thoughtful:

Kass said the ideas raise the possibility that "the partisans of scientific progress and the defenders of the dignity of nascent human life can go forward in partnership without anyone having to violate things they hold dear."

But the idea is neither an artful dodge nor a successful one. - GM

President's Council Dignifies Stem Cell "Solutions"

Chris Mooney noticed this careful dissection of the ideas for "getting around" the ethical problems associated with using embryonic stem cells in research. It is a nice, thorough review of these ideas and how problematic they are. We're, frankly, much less impressed with the entire discussion than are either Chris or other critics. But we've already made that argument ad nauseum. It is an open question why the council has pursued the questions it has chosen to pursue.