CGS-authored
The campaign to generate hype kicked off weeks before the news broke _ as often happens when biotechnology firms claim major achievements.
A company called Advanced Cell Technology was preparing to publish its results, out last week, that it had harvested human embryonic stem cells from single cells of embryos.
_We have a research discovery so important it will change some fundamental assumptions in science,_ a representative from a public relations company told me long before the news came out. But then added, _We can_t tell you the details yet._
When the company_s press release finally appeared, it called the new finding _a way out of the current political impasse in this country and elsewhere_ over the use of stem cells from human embryos. Many broadcasts and newspapers repeated that claim in lead stories and headlines. While the research is reasonable, published in the highly respected journal Nature, the notion it will solve ethical dilemmas, as claimed in the press release, is just plain wrong. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania and an...
A company called Advanced Cell Technology was preparing to publish its results, out last week, that it had harvested human embryonic stem cells from single cells of embryos.
_We have a research discovery so important it will change some fundamental assumptions in science,_ a representative from a public relations company told me long before the news came out. But then added, _We can_t tell you the details yet._
When the company_s press release finally appeared, it called the new finding _a way out of the current political impasse in this country and elsewhere_ over the use of stem cells from human embryos. Many broadcasts and newspapers repeated that claim in lead stories and headlines. While the research is reasonable, published in the highly respected journal Nature, the notion it will solve ethical dilemmas, as claimed in the press release, is just plain wrong. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania and an...