Bizarrely, someone at the conference I was working at last week walked up to me and invited me to apply for a job here, despite my having told him to be quiet during a seminar that I later discovered he was co-chairing. He’s Australian; they have a different attitude to that kind of thing—and he asked quite a lot of attendees to apply for jobs with him during the course of that meeting.
It now turns out that The Centre For Life is so desperate for people that it has been given permission to start cloning them. The detail I love about this story is that Miodrag Stojkovic, one of the group leaders concerned, speaks with the sort of Mittel-European accent that most people would hear and associate with B-movie mad scientists. Wouldn’t it be fun if it was an elaborate hoax by a bunch of mischievous Geordies?
[Yes I am being flip about an extraordinary and potentially beneficial advance in science, but the truth is I’m lost for words. The alternative would be an Onion-style “Holy Crap! Man Walks On Moon!” piece and I haven’t got time for awe; I’ve got to go to work.]
[…] p visiting PooterGeek and making serious points in the comments sections. It happened with my jokey human cloning post. It happened with my jokey op-ed exam post. This post is serious, therefore […]
Dare I be serious for a moment and refer you to:
http://www.fumento.com/biotech/proteus.html
This is a review of a book on stem cell research which asserts that the claims for ESCs (Embryonic Stem Cells) are highly optimistic and so far illusory, whereas, ASCs (Adult Stem Cells) are already hugely effective in many different areas of medecine and have the advantage of no moral difficulties.
I should add that what I know of the *technicalities* of this subject could be written on the back of a stamp but I would like to read your views on what is an aggravatingly complex subject.
Go on Pooter apply for the Job. Not a better place in the world to be living.
By the way, the best mad scientist accent was Hienz Woolf’s from the Great Egg Race. No doubt.
http://www.qwertyuiop.co.uk/gs/atoz/programmes/g/great_egg_race/
David,
You had to ask about that, didn’t you? I have half-heartedly waded through review papers about the technology underlying the stem-cell debate a couple of times and haven’t reached any conclusions I would be prepared defend in public—even here, as opposed to some scholarly forum. Predicting the future development of cell biology and its consequences for medicine is impossible.
To put it in perspective (and explain my “man walks on moon” reaction) I was given a personal tutorial in the grounds of the Dunn School of Pathology in 1989. In it, I was asked to run through all the reasons why no one would be able to clone a large mammal within the next twenty years. I was told repeatedly during the nineties by colleagues that the human genome would take a couple of decades to bring in. Today, I work at the Genome Campus where a third of the genome was completed. Next year, in theory, I could find myself working at the first institute to clone a human embryo.
If very clever and well-informed people can’t get stuff like that right, what hope have I of assessing the potential therapeutic benefits of various kinds of stem cell science?
Will,
Wolff was one of my absolute favourites when I was growing up. As I got older I began to wonder if he was an actor rather than a real “boffin”.
Tut, tut, PG, don’t give me all that ‘modesty forbids’ line. If *you*, with all you training and education, can’t come to some conclusion (even if tentative) on the comparative merits of ESC or ASC research, then no-one can! But let me help with this:
“Many scientists are dismayed at such bias and ignorance. British researchers editorialized in the February 2003 Journal of Cell Science that “despite such irrefutable evidence of what is possible, a veritable chorus of detractors of adult-stem cell plasticity has emerged, some doubting its very existence, motivated perhaps by more than a little self-interest.” (Quote from:
http://www.fumento.com/biotech/esc.html)
I should add that the “self-interest” comes from the fact that private money is pouring into ASC research because it has proved useful in the *real* world of medicine, as opposed to ESC research which despite fantastical claims has so far produced, er, zilch! Thus, the proponents of ESC research are desperate to get their hands on government money (or MY money as I fondly think of it!)
You made no mention of any possible moral difficulties concerning ESC research, and so, carefully, neither will I!
David, now you’re being silly. These aren’t quasi-theological positions to be derived from the arcana of the ancients. Specialisation in the sciences means just that. To get to grips on any happening branch of science takes a lot of reading of peer-reviewed journals, and some experimentation oneself. Reading astroturf in Tech Central Station (largely written by lawyers) will not do,
Damian is quite right. Very intelligent, previously honoured scientists have been utterly wrong when they try crystal-ball gazing, and Damian is showing how smart he is by not venturing an opinion either way.
Michael Fumento, who seems to be your only source, is, if I may say so, the opposite of Damian here. He is unqualified, knows little, but yaps a lot. “Those who talk do not know,” as the Zen saying has it, “Those who know do not talk.”
Backword Dave (BWD) calls me “silly”, and he may be right, but if he uses words of one syllable perhaps he will succeed in explaining to me exactly what the “happening branch of science” is.
He implies that it is impossible for a layman (like me!) to hold any opinion on matters scientific because of the neccessity “…of reading peer-reviewed journals…” and indulging “…in some experimentation oneself.” I may be silly , but Backword Dave is just, plain wrong. All you have to do is read people like Michael Fumento, who although not a scientist has nevertheless spent a lifetime writing on scientific topics for some very distinguished journals and acting as a conduit for the interested layman. Should BWD fancy his chances he could always take Fumento on, and who knows, he might appear in Fumento’s section called “Hate Mail”, in which various opponents are dissected with, er, well, ‘scientific’ exactitude.
Not, mind you, that I was quoting Fumento when I referred to people with an axe to grind slagging off ASC research. If BWD would care to read more carefully he will see that I was quoting British researchers writing in ‘The Journal of Cell Science’. (Is that sufficiently “peer-reviewed” for you, Dave?)
I have no arguements with BWD’s notion of scientists getting it totally wrong, Karl Popper demonstrated that gloomy concept years ago, hence my distrust of the ESC ‘enthusiasts’ (putting it politely) who are so keen to get hold of my money.
As for BWD’s Zen quote, I can only assume the old boy was smoking some strong stuff because when you think about it (for approximately 1.079 nanosecs, and how’s that for scientific!), it is utter tosh!
David (DD), I didn’t say that laypersons couldn’t have opinions: of course you can have an opinion, it just won’t sway me. PG is sensibly refusing to stick his neck out as a scientist. You’re saying
He may have come to a conclusion, but he’s not going to undermine his position as a scientist by voicing every half-baked idea he has. You’re attempting to flatter him into saying something on a blog which you can then quote as his professional view.
You didn’t give a link to the “Journal of Cell Science”, your link went to Michael Fumento, and I confess that, having suffered him before, and been unimpressed by an animated gif of a pig and a photo of Mary Tyler Moore, I gave up.
You seem to be happy to believe that some scientists are “totally wrong” while others are correct. I’m struck by Mr Fumento’s method of deciding who is wrong and who is right. Private: good; public: bad. And as Mr Fumento does not give sources, I’ll ungenerously assume that he’s quoting selectively.
If you dislike Zen quotations, how about “the empty vessel makes the most noise”? And I rather doubt that I, anyway, can think for 1.079 nanoseconds. I don’t know what thinking is, but brain activity happens over mili- or micro- not pico-seconds.
However, here is the article in question. If you get as far as the conclusion, you’ll find I’m not the only person smoking something.
But, being scientists, they are very much more cautious than they are portrayed by Mr Fumento.
I read Alison et al as doing exactly what Mr Fumento criticizes the ES supporters for doing. They are working in a field with potential, but few results so far, and they’re looking for funding.
Hope you enjoyed the wedding Damian. Sorry for filling up your comments like this.
Being a kindly chap, I will take pity on PG’s other reader and simply quote some statements written by Michael Fumento and ask BWD whether they are true or false:
#1:”By the 1980s stem-cell transplants with marrow and umbilical cord blood were routinely curing leukemias. ASCs now treat about 80 different diseases.” (True/False?)
#2: [In a review of a book by Ann B. Parson] “And ESCs? “An inescapable truth is that the adult versions are the only human stem cells so far employed for therapy in humans,” writes Parson. She also admits it appears the only advantage of ESCs is potential; that it’s widely believed they can differentiate into any type cell while differentiation of ASCs (at least 14 types have been discovered) is more limited. Yet she also concedes this belief may not be true; that one laboratory seemingly showed an ASC to be as pliable as an ESC.” (True/False?)
#3: “Currently, no medical therapies involve ESCs, nor is there a single human trial using them. Indeed, very few have even made it to animal testing.” (True/False?)
#4: “Yet ASCs have been routinely used to treat human disease since the 1980s. Since then, scientists have learned to culture and grow ASCs outside the body and convert them into an incredible array of human tissue. Ever hear of a bone-marrow transplant or umbilical-cord blood transplant? It’s not the marrow or the blood that’s key—it’s the stem cells contained therein.” (True/False?)
#5: “And ESCs? “An inescapable truth is that the adult versions are the only human stem cells so far employed for therapy in humans,” writes Parson. She also admits it appears the only advantage of ESCs is potential; that it’s widely believed they can differentiate into any type cell while differentiation of ASCs (at least 14 types have been discovered) is more limited. Yet she also concedes this belief may not be true; that one laboratory seemingly showed an ASC to be as pliable as an ESC.” (true/False?)
Finally, two points. Every layman quotes experts in support of a technical arguement. It is up to you, if you disagree, to quote someone in opposition. (Didn’t that creep Hegel call it a dialectic?) And as for Zen, I neither love him or hate him. If your ‘quotes’ are anything to go by, he’s only slightly more intelligent than the people who study him!
Well David, I don’t doubt that some things Mr Fumento says are indeed true.
I’ll need some time to check on what you’ve asked me. I’m not going to nod like a Churchill dog whenever you attempt to blind me with facts.
I was going to complain that all five of your true/false questions boil down to: have ESCs been used in therapy so far? (From evidence presented, no); have ASCs been so used? (Again from evidence presented, yes). However,questions 2 and 5 look suspiciously alike to me.
Perhaps they’re clones.
Fair enough! I suspect that we are dancing around a pinhead – although I have been known to argue about even smaller things just for the fun of it! However, if you are as much of a layman as I am on matters scientific, then someone like Fumento is very useful – and very formidable. All one can do, I suppose, is listen to the experts debate and then take a considered, but tentative, stand.
David, I think we’ve both had enough of this, but I’ve done a little reading, and I’d like to clarify my position.
FIrst, I think that because Damian is a professional scientist, not expressing an opinion is the right thing to do. If he did take a side, he may go for an interview one day to be met with “So, you think my research is rubbish do you?”
I think it’s fine for you to have an opinion on this. I think it’s fine for you to have an opinion on, say the Tony Martin case. But it would be silly for a trial lawyer to comment based on what she had read in (for the sake of argument) the Daily Mail, rather than studying the judgement, and the arguments put in court in some detail. Maybe you remember the rent-a-quote politicians Chris Morris snared into condemning “cake” (an entirely invented drug, which they naturally knew nothing about but were prepared to comment on anyway).
I’m not impressed the way you are with Michael Fumento. I find his writing too emotional and subjective. He’s written a book called “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS.” I haven’t read it, and I don’t know his arguments, but from his own precises, he doesn’t take into account children congenitally infected with AIDS in Africa (not to mention the large numbers of HIV-positive women; these aren’t gay men in San Francisco).
This is Fumento on stem cells again.
I take exception to “show the earth really is flat” part. Publishing a letter from a serious researcher who happens to hold a certain position is not “showing the earth is flat”. Nor is publishing a negative result.
Mr Fumento’s writing takes some known facts and sexes them up. That got Alistair Campbell into trouble too.
Me again. (Sorry PG.)
I should have included the links Fumento provided to the letter and the paper. This is the letter (PDF format). It’s two pages long. Both pages seem to come from Sciencemag.com. Page 1 is the letter. Page 2 is “Technical Comments” which include:
This is pretty much scientist-speak for “rubbish.”
So Science published a right-of-reply on the following page. Hardly the Vatican and Galileo.
Thank you, BWD, consider yourself ‘clarified’! But (oh, yes, I’m afraid there’s a ‘but’); first, I have read Fumento’s book (The Myth of Heterosexual Aids) which caused something of a furore when it came out and I have yet to read anything that convinces me he was other than dead right. Second, you should take African statistics on Aids with, er, well, only whilst wearing protection! They simply don’t have the infrastructure to produce proper statistics but they’re shrewd enough to see a large, fat, money-milch-cow (one’s thoughts turn to Miss Elizabeth Taylor and her starry friends who have raised zillions for this cause), and if Aids is what it takes to part the ‘West’ from its dosh, then they can have Aids by the multi-million – just think of a number, add your birthday and multiply by the number of sequins in Elton John’s suit
I have no wish to dwell on this, not least because I have yet to enjoy my Sunday dinner, but Fumento’s main point is that, apart from re-using needles for drug injections, the cause of Aids is buggery. Poor populations will indulge this habit not least because it is the cheapest form of birth control. Combine that with *war-torn* populations, ie, most of Africa, where social and moral rules have been destroyed, and it is certain that the practice will be indulged even more. To sum up, there is Aids in Africa but I suspect nothing like the dodgy figures bandied about by people with an axe to grind and/or a living to make. I hardly dare suggest you try:
http://www.fumento.com/disease/aidsstats.html
but go on, be a devil!