Crow Is Served

Richard M. Doerflinger and Wesley Smith have made much ado about an error in a column in the Albany Times Union that Glenn McGee and I wrote. They were incensed that we misidentified the Korean scientist involved in the experiments, which purported to show that adult stem cell research had proven therapeutic - indeed Miraculous - by helping paralyzed patient Hwang Mi-sun walk. They argued that somehow in making the mistake McGee and I were obscuring the fact that paralyzed people were allowed to walk again as a result of adult stem cell therapy.

Glenn and I got the name wrong. But we were not wrong about the fact that hyping adult stem cell research in the way that Smith and Doerflinger and many other critics of embryonic stem cell research have done is often rooted in research that has no more substance than that conducted by Professor Hwang with respect to cloning. Now comes the news--hardly surprising--that the crackpot Korean experiments so eagerly embraced and touted by Smith and Doerflinger - are complete and utter failures. Worse they actually have harmed most of those involved.

McGee and I await the prompt admission from those who touted this work that it is just as false, just as hyped and just as 'devastating' to the case that adult stem cell research is a proven alternative to embryonic stem cell research. Those who have paid for people from this group to show up and testify about the power of their 'cures' to legislators should make public their guilt by association with this immoral research.

As the critics know both of us have long counseled caution about 'breakthroughs' in embryonic stem cell research including Hwang's now discredited announcements. The critics now have some explaining to do about their hyping of Korean research that is just as immoral as that engaged in by Hwang. - Art Caplan