"A conspiracy of hype"
Bioethicist Alta Charo of University of Wisconsin commented on hype in stem cell research at "The State of Stem Cell Research" panel last month at the Milken Institute Global Conference
In my opinion, there’s almost been a conspiracy of hype in this field. Let’s take a look at all of the players. We have patient groups who were advocating vociferously for adequate federal funding, since federal funding’s really where the action’s at; and so really needed to over-promote the near term potential for therapies in order to gain sympathy from members of Congress. Members of Congress needed to score points with not only patient groups but on either side of the abortion debate to show their bonafides to their respective constituencies. And so for those who oppose the research, they would overhype the potential of alternative sources of stem cells other than embryonic. The scientific community was trying very hard in its papers to be very restrained, but they would be interviewed by members of the press after one of these papers would be published.
And in the press, where science writing used to be a feature writing – it used to be about description, about adding to your general knowledge for the sake of knowledge – it has over the years been turned into a classic news section in which you need to have a “he said, she said” back and forth kind of debate, which means you need people to be on opposite sides, and therefore you tend to elicit from people the quotes that you need. So reporters will get the quote they need from somebody in the scientific community about the potential for this. And that person, that scientist may have had three paragraphs of “this is what we need to do,” and “someday we may be able to,” and then says the magic words, “cure ALS.” Right? And then the next thing you see in the newspaper, the Washington Post will have a piece that talks about whether or not we’ll cure ALS with stem cells. And in every step along the way, we began to see kind of an incentive to ratchet up the dialog.
Frankly, the scientific community wasn’t innocent in this either as the journals have started sending out media alerts and press releases about papers they think are important which also tend to overhype the significant of each paper. How can there be a groundbreaking, a pathbreaking paper every other week from Nature? It’s not possible, unless you’re going to redefine those terms. And so all of us collectively have been moved into a state of near hysteria around this topic, pro and con, for all sorts of reasons having very little to do with actually making some scientific progress.
A video of the full panel is available at the Milken Institute's website. This quote begins around 28:30.
HT to FasterCures blog.
Previously on Biopolitical Times: