Michael Fumento

I have repeatedly written that efforts to downplay the importance of adult stem cells often go so far as to even deny their existence, even though they've been curing people since the 1950s, now cure or treat over 70 types of cancer, cure or treat myriad other diseases, and are involved in over 900 clinical trials. Here we go again. Rick Weiss, writing in the Washington Post about the Korean embryonic stem cell scandal, declares on page A1 of the newspaper: "The scandal also has delivered a body blow to stem cell science, a field of research born just seven years ago . . ." He's not even correct about embryonic stem cells. They were first discovered in rodents in the 1950s but researchers then, as now, found them so difficult to work with that the first human embryonic stem cell line was created only in 1998, and it's to that which he refers. There is no hint in the article that any other type of stem cell -- fake or otherwise -- exists.