It's irritating when politicians act like politicians. But it's infuriating when scientists act like politicians. They are supposed to be the truth-seekers. Now that the stem-cell wars have ended ("the stem-cell wars came to a sharp and sudden end when leading scientists announced that they had discovered ways to create pluripotent stem cells without using - much less killing - human embryos"), First Things looks at what we've learned:
For six years, from 2001 through 2007, embryonic stem cells seemed almost the sole topic of popular science. Front-page stories hyped the most minor of breakthroughs, newspaper editorials raged against any luddite who suggested even the slightest moral doubts, and television shows made stars of the scientists and biotech spokesmen who promised that embryonic stem cells would deliver extraordinary medical advances...Update, just to flesh this out a bit more:
"A decade from now, this will be just a funny historical footnote," the famed stem-cell scientist James Thomson said shortly after the new research was announced. He may be right, but he shouldn't be. We need to remember the events of 2001 to 2007, for the history of the stem-cell debate forms a classic study of what happens when politics and science find each other useful.
...
Since that breakthrough, stem cells have barely made the news. Interesting and exciting work is still going on, but what's changed is the immediate impact of stem cells - the political salience, in other words. For six years, from 2001 to 2007, embryonic stem cells were a weapon in a political battle. And, as in all political battles, usefulness trumps truth, even for the scientists who willingly made themselves into partisans during the debate.
...
Abortion politics had helped create the situation. A related hostility to the role of religion had added its share. And the big money of modern science had encouraged the alignments that made stem cells seem central to our political debates....
The politicians were guilty, but the scientists were more guilty, for they allowed - no they encouraged - politicians to make stem-cell research a tool in the public fights over abortion, public religion, and high finance...And with this history in mind, who will believe America's scientists the next time they tell us something that bears on an election?
Nancy Pelosi said that "the National Institutes of Health and Science hold the biblical power of a cure for us." The hopes of many were cruelly raised in scenes reminiscent of the old snake oil salesmen. Presidential candidate John Edwards pointed to paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve and proclaimed that a vote for the Democrats would mean that people like Reeve "are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."
There were some scientists, particularly in the period just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and before the presidential election of 2004 when the politics of stem cells had receded, who tried to pull back from the hype. A science writer for the New York Times admitted: "For all the handwringing by scientists, you might think that therapeutic cloning is on the verge of curing a disease or two...Almost all researchers, when questioned, confess that such accomplishments are more dream than reality."
Despite that, the scientific community invested a great deal of its prestige in a public account of stem cells that is now discredited. If we've learned anything, it's that politically useful science is always suspect.
No comments:
Post a Comment