Stem Cell Education and Hype
Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) have rather fallen out of the public eye lately, their position usurped by reprogrammed cells and, frankly, the lack of ESC-based treatments. However, the stem cell lobby seems to be trying to re-establish their brand.
First, the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) created a website supposed to provide a service to consumers:
Clinics all over the world claim to offer stem cell treatments for a wide variety of conditions. But are all of these treatments likely to be safe and effective?
The ISSCR provides information to help you evaluate these claims.
Summer Johnson, in a powerful post at the American Journal of Bioethics blog, called this "Therapeutic Misconception At Its Worst":
[T]he true hucksterism here is in fact the ISSCR website itself which promotes precisely so many of the purported harms that it allegedly is trying to prevent. Let's just start with the language on the front page. "A Closer Look at Stem Cell Treatment." Treatment. Perhaps I missed a step in the advances of stem cell research. Did we quickly jump over the experimental phase and already move into having effective stem cell therapies? Someone must have hit the fast-forward button while I was blinking. ...
I am usually reluctant to argue against patient education and empowerment, but this website does precisely the opposite. It only muddies the waters and will confuse patients desperate for cures who are turning to stem cell trials as a last resort and want very much to believe that the research laboratories that they are walking into are "clinics" and the trials they are enrolling in are "therapeutic." Unfortunately, that is not yet the case. And ISSCR should just come out and say so.
Meanwhile, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is taking a longer view. They have developed "the country's first high-school stem cell curriculum, which will be pitched to science teachers this fall." The project is essentially a resource for biology teachers, intended to complement not replace their own lesson plans. It's expected to be used selectively, and will include ethical discussions. In fact, it may turn out to be worthy and useful (ethics and social issues get little attention in the high school curriculum), but it's difficult not to see it as part of a CIRM agenda for prolonging its own existence.
CIRM itself exists largely as a result of hype and overstatement, and is widely viewed as a flawed institution. To the extent that this initiative confuses propaganda with education, it is a step in the wrong direction.
Meanwhile, Geron's efforts to start clinical trials on an ESC-based treatment got a boost from the FDA last week, when the agency lifted a ban imposed in January 2009. (Reaction was summarized at the California Stem Cell Report here and here.) Phase 1 trials are still a month or two off and, wrote Andrew Pollack in the New York Times:
Years of further testing will be required before the therapy would be proven and ready for widespread use, assuming it works.
Previously on Biopolitical Times: