“Shamelessly oversold,” CIRM has funded just a trickle of clinical trials in hunt for stem cell therapies

By Michael Cook The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine [CIRM] was created in 2004 after voters overwhelmingly supported a $3 billion bond issue to pay for stem cell cures. President George W. Bush had just restricted federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research to cells derived from embryos that had already been destroyed and …

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Have embryonic stem cells hit the wall?

By Michael Cook “Will Embryonic Stem Cells Ever Cure Anything?” is a skeptical headline which you would expect to read in a conservative journal like the National Review or the Weekly Standard. However, it is a bit surprising to find it in the MIT Technology Review, in a profile of Douglas Melton, a Harvard stem …

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Embryonic Stem Cell Hypers Opened Door for Stem Cell Fraud

By Wesley J. Smith Embryonic stem cell hypers have themselves to blame for the apparent proliferation of stem cell fraud. You see, in order to win the ESCR political debate, harm President Bush’s popularity, and gain billions in research dollars, universities, scientists, bioethicists, sector advocacy groups, and Big Biotech PR departments–amplified by an in the …

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Washington Post editorial hypes embryonic stem cells again, caught up in latest “big payoff”

  By Dave Andrusko Well, you have to give the Washington Post’s editorial lauding the supposedly now-realized “potential” of embryonic stem cells, this much: they did spell the most prominent author’s name correctly. After that, not so much. Last Thursday Dr. David Prentice explained what a group of Harvard researchers, led by Dr. Douglas Melton, …

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San Francisco Chronicle Turns Against CA Stem Cell Agency

  By Wesley J. Smith In 2004, California voters passed Proposition 71 under an avalanche of mendacious CURES! CURES! CURES! hype: Children would get out of wheelchairs! Diabetes would be conquered! Mendacity, mendacity, all was mendacity. Ten years later and the spin has spun. Now, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) will need voters …

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Embryo Value Debated in Europe Too

  By Wesley J. Smith Pro embryo-destructive research activists are often so irrational. They claim than an embryo isn’t an embryo but merely a “bunch of cells.” Well, for the reductionist minded, so are they. They claim that an embryo is no different than the cells you kill when you brush your teeth. But embryos …

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Famous singer unfortunately misunderstands and misrepresents effectiveness of embryonic stem cells

By Dave Andrusko A few years back when actor Michael J. Fox made a number of ill-informed comments about the “promise” of embryonic stem cells, it was impossible not to cut him some slack. He suffers from Parkinson’s disease and it was only human nature on his part to buy into the PR that somehow …

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Geron Sells Embryonic Stem Cell Business

By Wesley J. Smith Editor’s note. Wesley alludes to the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. CIRM was established after voters in 2004 approved a state ballot initiative, Proposition 71, which funded embryonic stem cell/human cloning research using $3 billion in bonds (only $859 million remains). CIRM has come under tremendous criticism from outside authorities. I …

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“Embryonic Stem Cells … Can’t Treat Cancer”

By Rai Rojas Friday last was a cold and cloudy day in DC, but like many pro-lifers in the city that morning I was excited about participating in the March for Life later that afternoon.  A coworker, a friend really, a brother and I were standing in the alley behind our office building sipping coffee …

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More evidence that when compelled to look elsewhere, scientists readily find acceptable alternatives to embryonic stem cells

By Dave Andrusko A report in today’s Guardian newspaper is just the latest evidence that when researchers are compelled to find stem cells sources other than human embryos, they benefit twice over. First, since human embryonic stem cells have no proven track record to date, resources are not wasted. Second, the need to look elsewhere …

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Hyping Embryonic Stem Cells Like It’s 2004

By Wesley J. Smith Editor’s note. This is excerpted from a post at Wesley’s terrific blog which is now located at www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/328843/hyping-embryonic-stem-cells-its-2004 I thought we were finally finished with all the hype over embryonic stem cell research.  During the first decade of the 21st century, that was pretty much all we got in the media, …

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