getting to the truth behind stem-cell breakthrough - our sunday visitor october 17, 2006 by stephen...

8/12/2019 Getting to the Truth Behind Stem-Cell Breakthrough - Our Sunday Visitor October 17, 2006 by Stephen James

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STEM-CELL

breakthrough

Getting to thetruth behind

COMPANYS CLAIMABOUT ITS EMBRYONIC

RESEARCH CALLED ASHAM. PAGES 4-5

S E P T E M B E R 1 7 , 2 0 0 6

VOLUME 95, NO. 21 $2.00 OSV PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONwww.osv.com

CATHOLIC CLARITY IN A COMPLEX WORLD

Helping hand or handout?New Las Vegas law that prohibits feeding the

homeless in public parks challengesCatholics to question how to best care for

our less fortunate brothers and sisters.

NEWS ANALYSIS, Page 3EDITORIAL, Page 19

GEORGIA MISSIONARIES WERE MARTYRED DEFENDING MARRIAGE lPAGE 6

FALL BOOKS PREVIEW OFFERS READING RECOMMENDATIONS lPAGES 9-12

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News Analysis

SEPTEMBER 17, 2006 l OUR SUNDAY VISITOR

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BIOTECH

In this case,we do not destroythe embryo,ACT CEO WilliamCaldwell told PBS viewers in anappearance on the NewsHourwith Jim Lehrer the next day.Thats the whole purpose ofwhat we perceive to be a majorscientific breakthrough.

Among other things,ACT said

the news meant that most moralobjections to embryonic stem-cell research,which have blockedfederal and other funding, werenow eliminated.For most ratio-nal people, this removes the lastrational objection for opposingthis research,ACT vice presidentof research and scientific devel-opment Robert Lanza toldReuters news service.

The Aug. 23 announcementcoincided with the online pub-lication ofa research paper titledHuman embryonic stem-celllines derived from single blas-tomereswritten by four employ-ees of ACT and published in

Nature,the largest scientific jour-nal in Great Britain. Relying onpress releases put out by ACT andthe publisher of Nature, news-papers in England and the UnitedStates immediately ran promi-nent stories touting the break-through.

But within days, Nature sentout two revised press releasesapologizing to journalists that itsoriginal statement was partiallyin error and that the embryos usedto produce the stem cells did notsurvive the process.We feel it nec-essary to explain that this paperdemonstrates that human embry-onic stem cells can be grown

from single cells, but that theembryos that were used for theseexperiments did not remainintact,Nature said.

All a shamRichard Doerflinger, deputy

director of the U.S.bishopspro-life office watched the story unfoldwith intense interest. It turnedout that it was all a sham, andthey actually did destroy all theembryos, he told Our SundayVisitor.

Doerflinger also noticed thata series of technical photos usedin the Nature article were mis-leading as well.Theres a pictureon page one of the Nature arti-cle that has come in for someattention too because its a seriesof pictures and it looks like a nar-r a tive o f o ne e m br yo, h e

explained.The photos appear to show anembryo before and after beingharvested for stem cells and thensurviving the process,but the pic-tures are not in fact the sameembryo.They were substitutingphotos to create the impressionof a story where the embryos sur-vived the process,but its just nottrue, he said. So they cookedthe photographs, in a sense.

Nature claims the article wentthrough a rigorous peer-reviewprocess but wont elaborate onwho reviewed the article beforepublication. Its a confidentialprocess,Im afraid,Nature senior

press officer Ruth Francis toldOSV from Britain. But it wasreviewed in the same way as anyother Nature paper would be, sotheres no question.Other than

the initial press release problem,which was corrected,Francis saidNature stands behind the article.

Funding injectionThe questions about the accu-

racy of the research havent,how-ever,adversely affected the finan-cial status of ACT. Within days

of the announcement and sub-sequent national headlines,stockin the company went through theroof[see graphic].One day beforethe breakthrough news, ACT

had announced it was seeking toraise $11.3 million in new fund-ing.Two days after the announce-ment,ACT held a conference callwith investors where it trumpetedits new stem-cell method andimmediately raised $13.5 millionfrom its existing investors,negat-ing the need to raise the $11.3

million from new investors.The funding injection wasmuch needed because the 27-employee company was report-edly financially struggling because

of a depressed stock pother problems. I thiprofited from the hype, amay continue to do so, unately, Doerflinger said

Calls to the companycontact, James CarbonLanza,ACT vice presidenot returned.

Little correctionDoerflinger is also co

that few of the newspapinitially wrote about the i

Claim on embryonic research a sham, expert sayNature journal recants assertion that embryos were not harmed in research, but news media are slow to follow up

Jingsong Chu of Advanced Cell Technology works on making a nutrient-rich brfor cell to feed from at Advanced Cell Technology. The Alameda, Calif., bioteccompany claimed it had developed a way to grow stem-cell lines from a singleextracted from a human embryo. PHOTO BY GREGORY URQUIAGA/CONTRA COSTA TIMES/ZUMA PRESS

By Stephen James

Last month, biotechnology company Advanced Cell

Technology (ACT) stunned the worldwide scientific

community and the public when it announced it developed

a method to make embryonic stem cells using a technique

that did not harm embryos from which the cells were derived.

Wild financial rideSince its founding in 1994, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT)

has struggled to remain a financially viable biotechnology com-pany. In 2005, the company went public and its stock began trad-ing as an Over the Counter Bulletin Board (OTC BB) stock. InFebruary 2005 the stock briefly sold at a high of $7 per sharebefore beginning a steady decline, closing at 27 cents per shareon Aug. 21, 2006. On Aug. 22, ACT announced that it planned toraise $11.3 million from private investors.

The next day, ACT announced that its scientists had discovered

a breakthrough technique to make embryonic stem cells withoutharm to the primary embryo. The company said the processwould mitigate the moral and ethical objections to stem-cellresearch and pave the way for the federal government, amongother sources, to authorize massive funding for embryonic stem-cell research. The announcement made headline news throughoutthe world. On Aug. 25, ACT announced it had raised $13.5 millionin new funding from existing investors. Within days, the companysbreakthrough technique claim was called into question (see mainstory).

At right are the closing stock prices per share for ACT fromAug. 21 to Aug. 29. 8/21 8/22 8/23 8/24 8/25 8/28 8/2


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bothered to follow up and cor-rect the misinformation theydistributed nationwide,and thatthe erroneous information isnow embedded in the publicconsciousness.

The frustration you havewith this kind of a story is thatyou have th es e fron t- pa geannouncements and thats whateverybody remembers,and thenthe corrections come in on Page20 later on.It never quite sticks,he said. The bogus informationis then replicated, even by themedia.

New York Daily News colum-nist Lenore Skenazy might be oneexample of the problem.Nearlya week after Nature informed themedia of its mistake, Skenazywrote a column headlined Anti-stem Zealots Are All Out ofAmmo. Citing the discredited

ACT breakthrough as fact,Skenazy relentlessly deridedstem-cell research opponentsand said their objections couldno longer be sustained. This[method] does not kill theembryo the way the older methodof harvesting stem cells did,sheproclaimed.

And the spread of misinfor-mation continues.

Stephen James writes fromCalifornia.

News Analysis

OUR SUNDAY VISITOR l SEPTEMBER 17, 20

5

After his brother died ofAIDS,

he raised $6 million to buildChrista House,a hospice for ter-minally il l AIDS patients in WestBabylon, N.Y.

About six years ago,Hartmanfaced his own personal healthchallenge when he was diagnosedwith Parkinsons disease, anincurable, degenerative neuro-logical disorder that affects morethan 1 million Americans,includ-ing actor Michael J.Fox and for-mer boxer Muhammad Ali.

During a routine trip to his

doctors office for treatment,Father Hartman said he realizedthat God needed him to raisemoney to bring about a cure forthe disease.In 2004,he establishedthe Thomas Hartman Foun-dation for Parkinsons Research.

Finding a cureFather Hartman soon learned

that many in the Parkinsonssearch-for-a-cure communitywere strong advocates of embry-onic stem-cell research, anapproach he had expressly for-bidden when he set up his ownfoundation and an approach thatgoes against the Churchs pro-lifevalues s ince embryos aredestroyed in the process.

Right from the beginning of

our foundation,we put down thatwe will not participate in embry-onic stem-cell research, he toldOSV.I sit on the Michael [J.] Fox[Foundation for ParkinsonsResearch] board,and theyre allo-cating 9 percent of their moneyto embryonic stem cells.Almosteveryone on the board is in favorof [research using] embryonicstem cells.

Finding alternativesFather Hartman set out to

find alternative research meth-ods he could support and con-tacted a friend who was a scien-tist at Stanford University.

I said Is there a way we cancreate an alternative to embry-onic stem cells? This way thoseof us who feel very strongly aboutthe human life can have a way ofgetting involved and seeing ifthis scientific approach may bemore helpful in the future forhealing diseases , FatherHartman said.

The scientist told the priestabout altered nuclear transfer(ANT), a proposed technologi-cal approach to obtain human

pluripotent stem cells,which athe functional equivalent human embryonic stem cells thdoesnt involve creating odestroying human embryos.

We then proceeded to ha40 scientists and doctors frothroughout the world who aexperts on embryonic stem cecome in and discuss whether thnew method was moral and accord with the Catholic Churchhe said.

The group, which includethen-Archbishop William Levao f the Ar ch dio ce se o f SaFrancisco, Richard Doerflingedeputy director of the U.bishops pro-life office and members of the Bush administratioanalyzed and discussed ANT fothree days.

Father Hartman is also pusing researchers worldwide to colaborate on efforts to find a cu

for Parkinsons disease.Anything we do,if we find thcure to Parkinsons, were gointo have a leg up on a cure for mutiple sclerosis,Alzheimers,metal retardation and Lou Gehrigdisease all of these are gointo fall rather quickly after we gthe initial insight of neurodegeerative disease, he said. So four own sake we have to emboldeour people and say, We havechance to come up with a curewe can all work together.

Afflicted priest searches for pro-life cureFather Tom Hartman champions pro-life

stem-cell research through his foundation

By Stephen James

Father Tom Hartman has

always kept his plate

full: Since his ordination in

1971, he has been a parish

priest, a radio and TV per-

sonality,author and chaplain

for the Nassau County Police

Department and New York

Jets football team.

State statutes or executive orders encour-age or fund embryonic stem-cell research inCal ifornia , Connect icut, Maryland,Massachusetts, New Jersey and Illinois.

But the laws and regulations in each statecan change at any time, as they did inMassachusetts at the end of August whenthe state adopted new regulations restrict-ing certain research methods. The changethere triggered a war of words between Gov.Mitt Romney and scientists at HarvardUniversity,who accused the governor oftry-ing to subvert 2005 legislation intended to

broaden stem-cell research in the state.Romney countered that researchers pushedthe envelope beyond the original intent.

Varying measuresIn 2004,New Jersey became the first state

to appropriate funds specifically for adultand embryonic stem-cell research and laterthat same year,voters in California approveda proposition that allocated $3 billion in bondfunding to finance stem-cell research.Although Californias program has beentied up in court challenges, New Jersey hasallocated millions each year to its own NewJersey Stem-Cell Institute.

The type of research that each state sup-ports varies,according to Richard Doerflinger,deputy director of the U.S.bishops pro-lifeoffice.Some states have passed funding mea-sures to support scientific progress, to sup-port biotechnology, that excludes avenuesthat require destroying embryos, he said.

For example,in Maryland theres a newfund for stem-cell research.It doesnt say thatany of that has to be embryonic,it says thattheyre going to fund the research that looksmost promising for treatments. That dis-tinction can be important because the mostpromising treatments usually involve adult

stem cells instead of embryonic stem celThe Catholic Church supports adult stemcell treatment because no embryos or livare harmed in research.

Funding progressNew Jersey channeled most of their fund

ing to adult stem-cell research becaupatients with 72 different conditions havbenefited from adult stem cells so far, whino one has benefited from embryonic stemcells, Doerflinger explained. On the othhand, the California initiative specifies ththe top priority of funding will be to researcthat is not eligible for federal funding.

In other words, it will go primarily embryonic stem cells, to cloning,because thfederal government wont fund research threquires destroying embryos, he said.

The U.S.bishops and state Catholic conferences are making their voices heard in leislatures and commissions that are considering or implementing laws to increase stemcell research.

Weve had mixed success in the statebut I think in the end, more people will reaize that the research avenues that are producing treatments are also the ones that armorally acceptable, Doerflinger said.

By Stephen James

While federal law currently pro-

hibits federal funding for any

stem-cell process in which an embryo

is destroyed,state laws on the issue vary

widely, and several states have set up

their own programs to fund contro-

versial experimentation.

More states circumvent federal laws on research

God Squad co-hostFather Tom Hartman wasdiagnosed with Parkin-sons disease in 2000.COURTESY OF THOMAS HARTMAN FOUNDATION

Controversies continue as support grows for funding efforts not sanctioned by government

This combination picturereleased Advanced CellTechnology shows a sin-gle cell being removedfrom a human embryo.AFP PHOTO

getting to the truth behind stem-cell breakthrough - our sunday visitor october 17, 2006 by stephen...

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