PostWatch

The Porkbusters' House Leadership Manifesto

Sounds good to me. I signeth. Here's the statement:

We are bloggers with boatloads of opinions, and none of us come close to agreeing with any other one of us all of the time. But we do agree on this: The new leadership in the House of Representatives needs to be thoroughly and transparently free of the taint of the Jack Abramoff scandals, and beyond that, of undue influence of K Street.

We are not naive about lobbying, and we know it can and has in fact advanced crucial issues and has often served to inform rather than simply influence Members.

But we are certain that the public is disgusted with excess and with privilege. We hope the Hastert-Dreier effort leads to sweeping reforms including the end of subsidized travel and other obvious influence operations. Just as importantly, we call for major changes to increase openness, transparency and accountability in Congressional operations and in the appropriations process.

As for the Republican leadership elections, we hope to see more candidates who will support these goals, and we therefore welcome the entry of Congressman John Shadegg to the race for Majority Leader. We hope every Congressman who is committed to ethical and transparent conduct supports a reform agenda and a reform candidate. And we hope all would-be members of the leadership make themselves available to new media to answer questions now and on a regular basis in the future.

Cooked up by the likes if Glenn Reynolds and NZ Bear. Supporters include Michelle Malkin, the Powerline gang etc. Follow the link.

I mean if you've heard of them.

Even The Op-Ed Page Never Heard Of Adult Stem Cells

Endricrinologist David Shaywitz writes an Op-Ed today, Stem Cell Hype and Hope, which asks for patience and rigorous research standards in a field recently damaged by the fraud of Hwang Woo Suk. But just like in the news pages, embryonic stem cell research is assumed to be the only game in town:

Meanwhile, stem cell research itself trudged ahead slowly, for all the usual reasons -- as well as some unique ones. Scientific research is notoriously difficult, and progress typically incremental; human embryonic stem cells also happen to be intrinsically difficult to grow. Moreover, government restrictions severely hampered the ability of researchers to pursue the best science and discouraged many bright young investigators from entering the field.

Good science usually does trudge along slowly, and one reason adult stem-cell technology is much further advanced is that it's been trudging for a lot longer. Not that you'd know from Shaywitz. Later:

The good news is that underneath all this mess, stellar science really is happening. Stem cells have proved even more captivating than we could have imagined, and understanding the process by which a stem cell progressively differentiates into a specialized cell such as a neuron or a pancreas beta cell is perhaps the most compelling biology question for our generation. Stem cells have sparked our interest for good reason.

But we're not going to figure out how they work overnight; it will take a very long time and require our best minds, as well as our collective effort (and, ideally, our collective dollars). Translating this knowledge into clinically meaningful applications is certain to take even longer and present still more challenges -- yet it should be achievable.

Don Ho thinks it's achievable right now:

Honolulu

-- Legendary Hawaiian crooner Don Ho says he could barely walk, let alone sing, and would have been a "goner" without an experimental stem-cell procedure on his ailing heart earlier this month in Thailand.

Ho, known for his signature tune Tiny Bubbles, said he hopes to return to the stage soon.

"I'm feeling terrific, 100 per cent better," Ho said in one of his first interviews since his surgery on Dec. 6. "I'm ready to go, but I've got to listen to the doctors."

The 75-year-old singer underwent a new treatment that hasn't been approved in the U.S. It involves multiplying stem cells taken from his blood and injecting them into his heart in hopes of strengthening it. The experimental procedure was developed by TheraVitae Co., which has offices in Thailand and labs in Israel, where Ho's stem cells were sent to be multiplied.

The biggest drawback? It's based on boring adult stem cells. So it's not splashed all over the front pages of the Post. Or any pages, as far as I can tell.

Another Sago Blunder

Reporters on deadline require some idea of what they're going to file ahead of time, but the arrival of inconvenient facts requires more than a throwaway line, especially if it tends to dispute the other 98% of your story.

On Sunday, Joby Warrick wrote Sago Puts Spotlight On Safety Strategy, with the subhed U.S. Mine Agency Issues Citations, But Penalties Are Light. That's the gist. Many quotes from critics of the agency under the Bush Adminstration for not imposing heavier fines. But as John Merline writes at TCS Daily, the national safety record has improved steadily during the Bush years. Anyone out there think that message has gotten through?

Merline:

Mining fatalities have dropped every year President Bush has been in the White House, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Since 2001, mining deaths averaged 63 a year, which is 30% lower than during the Clinton administration. The fatality rate has dropped as well -- it was 31% lower in 2004 than it was in the last year of the Clinton administration.

In fact, it was during the Clinton years that the long-term decline in mining deaths stalled out, only to return to its historic downward trend after he left for private life.

As Merline notes, the Post mentions that in passing--and partly to deflect any credit to Bush. From Warricks' story:

The chief enforcer of federal mining laws, the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, defends its performance, pointing to a steady decline in the number of deaths and injuries in coal mines in recent years. Some of the decline has been attributed to increased mechanization, though both industry and union officials acknowledge improvements in safety practices.

That's it, folks. Meanwhile we have multiple quotes from critics berating Bush & Co. for imposing fewer fines, and smaller ones at that.

Is this the measure of a liberal mind?--that progress is measured not by lives saved but by how many fines you collect, or how many angry reports you write?

I don't know. And I'm not a mine-safety expert. But I think I would have been better informed if somebody at the Post had asked a few more questions, as Merline did, about this:

Top-Secret Stem Cell Research

Two more examples today of the Post's lack of a clue on adult stem-cell therapies and research. The first in a brief about the journal Science retracting another embryonic stem-cell publication by Hwang Woo Suk:

The editor in chief of the journal Science said yesterday that he would start the process of retracting a 2004 article in which disgraced South Korean stem cell researcher Hwang Woo Suk claimed to have made stem cells for the first time from cloned human embryos. Donald Kennedy said he was taking the action in response to Korean investigators' disclosure yesterday that the work was faked....

U.S. scientists said they would continue efforts to develop medically useful stem cells despite the revelations of fraud in Korea, but the Roman Catholic Church, which opposes experiments on human embryos, called for new restrictions on the research....

Whereupon we get a quote from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops against violating ethics in the pursuit of miracle cures. Yes. But nothing, as usual, about the therapies now available and the research promising more from adult stem cells.

In the Metro section, we come a little closer to the truth. A little. John Wagner writes Ehrlich's Stem Cell Request Sparks Furor in Annapolis:

Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. shook up a volatile debate over stem cell research yesterday, announcing on the eve of lawmakers' return to Annapolis that he will propose spending $20 million in state money on the science.

Paul E. Schurick, the governor's communications director, said Ehrlich (R) will leave it to a state-created technology development corporation to determine whether grants should be made to researchers conducting work on embryonic stem cells or on less controversial forms of the research.

Republicans in the General Assembly blocked a bill last year that would have authorized state funding for embryonic research, which supporters say holds great promise in treating Parkinson's disease, juvenile diabetes and other conditions.

Opponents say the work is unethical, however, because it involves destruction of human embryos, and they argue that research on other types of stem cells, such as those derived from bone marrow, might prove more successful....

Might? What do you mean, might?

Michael Fumento, May 16, 2004:

   * More than 30 anticancer uses for stem cells have been tested on humans, with many already in routine therapeutical use.
    * By some accounts, the area in which stem-cell applications are moving fastest is autoimmune disease, in which the body's own protective system turns on itself. Diseases for which stem cells currently are being tested on humans include diabetes, lupus, multiple sclerosis, Evans syndrome, rheumatic disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease), among many others.
    * Just last February, two different human-autopsy studies demonstrated that stem cells transfused into the marrow work their way into the brain, where they can repair neurons and other vital cells. Other studies have shown that when injected into animals with severed spinal cords, stem cells rush to the injury site effecting repairs. "I think the stem cells may act as a repair squad," says the leader of one of the two studies, Helen Blau of the Stanford University Brain Research Institute. "They travel through the bloodstream, respond to stress, and contribute to brain cells. They clearly repair damage in muscle and other tissues."
    * At a conference in late 2002, French researchers reported that during the last 14 years they had performed 69 stem-cell transplants with an 85 percent disease-free survival rate. Since improving their procedure in 1992, all 30 of the last transplants have been successful.
    * Stem cells have been injected into damaged hearts and become functional muscle. This destroyed the dogma that heart muscle cannot be repaired, just as stem-cell research also wrecked the firmly held belief that brain tissue cannot regenerate.

Adult stem cells all.

Might?

The Stem Cell That Dare Not Speak Its Name

That would be adult. I may have used the hed above before, because I continue to be bemused by the Post's ability to write about stem-cell research as if embryonic work were the only game in town.

Today we have South Korean Panel Debunks Scientist's Stem Cell Claims by Anthony Faiola and Rick Weiss. The Post certainly hasn't neglected to report the fraud perpetrated by Hwang Woo Suk. The lede:

An academic panel investigating South Korean stem cell scientist Hwang Woo Suk concluded Tuesday that the embattled researcher's fraudulent experiments reach back further than previously known and encompass the most seminal of his so-called successes: the first creation of stem cells from cloned human embryos.

The new determination that the results of those experiments were largely falsified and that Hwang never obtained stem cells from cloned embryos discredits what had appeared to be one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of the decade. The deception means that the highly touted field of embryonic stem cell research is years behind where scientists thought it was...

Is there another major field of stem-cell research with a track record of success? There is. Do you learn about it from the Post? You do not. Later Faiola and Weiss tell us:

Hwang's claim, published in a landmark 2004 paper in the journal Science, heralded the stunning prospect of human cloning and the promise of using stem cell therapy to treat incurable diseases.

Um, yeah, the promise is being fulfilled with adult stem cells, guys. More:

Until the growing questions about the research, Hwang and his team had been credited with putting South Korea at the center of the emerging international field of stem cell science. Their reported breakthroughs had been seen as offering new hope for patients with conditions including Parkinson's disease, diabetes and spinal cord injuries who could benefit from regenerative stem cell therapy.

I'm not sure if "old hopes" is the best counterpart to the abovementioned "new hopes," but there's been substantial progress in all these areas with adult stem cells.

With Parkinson's, as related by one Dennis Turner in testimony at a Senate hearing in the summer of 2004. Turner underwent experimental surgery using his own adult neural stem cells:

Soon after having the cells injected my Parkinson’s symptoms began to improve. My trembling grew less and less, until to all appearances it was gone, only slightly reappearing if I became upset. Dr. Levesque had me tested by a Neurologist, who said he wouldn’t have known I had Parkinson’s if he had met me on the street. I was once again able to use my right hand and arm normally, enjoying activities that I given up hope of ever doing.

Since being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease my condition had slowly, but continuously worsened. I can’t say with certainty what my condition would have become if Dr. Levesque had not used my own adult stem cells to treat me. But I have no doubt that because of this treatment I’ve enjoyed five years of quality life that I feared had passed me by....

With diabetes, as related by Michael Fumento:

Harvard researcher Dr. Denise Faustman thinks she can cure type 1 (or juvenile) diabetes. She's done it in mice and wants to try it on humans....

And with spinal cord injuries, also here courtesy of Fumento:

Those who work with the disabled talk guardedly about "a cure." Research showing partial regeneration of injured rodent spines from adult stem cells goes back a decade, and is now undergoing human testing. Others have used mature Schwann cells from the brain to regenerate animal spinal tissue...

All this, and you don't have to kill a human embryo. I love science.

I also love competent reporting. When it happens.

'Clarification' Means It Wasn't Our Fault

Our old friend Ann Scott Tyson had the misfortune of misreporting that 12 miners had survived that terrible mine disaster in Sago, but let's not go crazy and describe the fix as a correction. It's a clarification, as shown by the current note appended to the original story, at left. The update blames parties other than multilayered fact-checking professional journalists.

This is a very sad day and I don't want to convey an inappropriate tone. But entirely separate from this disaster and its mishandling by mainstream media, we have the amusing spectable of a newspaper painfully reluctant to concede it's responsible for screwing up. Yes, this is the very same paper that, like its colleagues, repeatedly criticizes President Bush for never admitting mistakes.

And I see the Post finally--and, as I'd expected, secretly--got around to correcting its hilarious copy-editor's note that had been unintentionaly included on a clarification to a Petula Dvorak story published Sept. 23 that falsely described one Patrice Cuddy as a "novice protestor." As I noted on Oct. 9, the correction, which doesn't even fully record Cuddy's history as an activist, read as follows:

"A Sept. 23 Metro article about people coming to Washington for the Sept. 24 demonstration against the war in Iraq described ^ (don't want to say "incorrectly" in this case) Patrice Cuddy, 56, of Olathe, Kan., as a novice protester. Cuddy had participated in three other large rallies against the war, two in Washington and one in New York."

Bold added. I've blogged about that from time to time, and as recently as Dec. 19 it was still there. Now it's gone. Without a word to anyone, and by the way Washington Post, I see you crawl my site, so you're welcome!

Bill Roggio Takes on the Post

At NRO:

Guilt by association. It is a common tool used to discredit those deemed a threat to the established order. Recently, I've found myself on the receiving end of such a tactic courtesy of a piece by Jonathan Finer and Douglas Struck in the Washington Post.

On the day after Christmas, the Washington Post featured an article titled "Bloggers, Money Now Weapons in Information War — U.S. Recruits Advocates to the Front, Pays Iraqi TV Stations for Coverage," of which my recent embed in Iraq was the subject of scrutiny as a military-information operation. It is a fact-challenged article that manages to cast an unfair shadow on my reporting from Iraq.

The piece claims that I had retired from the military, when in fact it requires 20 years of service to retire. I served six years on active duty and two years in the National Guard. The authors report that I was credentialed by the American Enterprise Institute, when in fact this is impossible, as a think tank cannot provide media credentials — this must be done by a recognized news organization. I was credentialed by The Weekly Standard and the Canadian talk-radio show The World Tonight. And finally, contrary to the report, I was not in Iraq when the article was published. I had been home for nearly a week. Each of these items could have been easily confirmed by a simple inquiry.

The incorrect facts on their own can easily be discounted as trivial, but the suggestion that I was credentialed by the American Enterprise Institute certainly implies I was part of some kind of orchestrated right-wing ploy (there go those neocon war hawks again!). But couple the Post's fake "facts" with the misrepresentation of the embed-credentialing process and the blending of my story with military-information operations, and the groundwork has been laid to label me as a tool of the military....

Greetings Postwatchers

Blogging could be pretty light this week--I'm taking care of some other business, including a hoped-for complete resolution of my last month's horrendous broadband service from Comcast. Enjoy life in the meantime.