GEORGIA MISSIONARIES WERE MARTYRED DEFENDING MARRIAGE l PAGE 6 FALL BOOKS PREVIEW OFFERS READING RECOMMENDATIONS l PAGES 9-12

EX-JANITOR IS WINNING AWARDS FOR SALVATION VIDEO SERIES l PAGE 13

CATHOLIC CLARITY IN A COMPLEX WORLD

Getting to the truth behind

COMPANYS CLAIM ABOUT ITS EMBRYONIC RESEARCH CALLED A SHAM. PAGES 4-5

breakthrough
Helping hand or handout?
New Las Vegas law that prohibits feeding the homeless in public parks challenges Catholics to question how to best care for our less fortunate brothers and sisters. NEWS ANALYSIS, Page 3 EDITORIAL, Page 19

STEM-CELL

SEPTEMBER 17, 2006

VOLUME 95, NO. 21 $2.00

www.osv.com

OSV PHOTO ILLUSTRATION

News Analysis

BIOTECH

Claim on embryonic research a sham, expert says

Nature journal recants assertion that embryos were not harmed in research, but news media are slow to follow up
By Stephen James

ast month, biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) stunned the worldwide scientific

community and the public when it announced it developed a method to make embryonic stem cells using a technique that did not harm embryos from which the cells were derived.
In this case,we do not destroy the embryo,ACT CEO William Caldwell told PBS viewers in an appearance on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer the next day. Thats the whole purpose of what we perceive to be a major scientific breakthrough. Among other things,ACT said the news meant that most moral objections to embryonic stemcell research,which have blocked federal and other funding, were now eliminated.For most rational people, this removes the last rational objection for opposing this research,ACT vice president of research and scientific development Robert Lanza told Reuters news service. The Aug. 23 announcement coincided with the online publication of a research paper titled Human embryonic stem-cell lines derived from single blastomereswritten by four employees of ACT and published in Nature,the largest scientific journal in Great Britain. Relying on press releases put out by ACT and the publisher of Nature, newspapers in England and the United States immediately ran prominent stories touting the breakthrough. But within days, Nature sent out two revised press releases apologizing to journalists that its original statement was partially in error and that the embryos used to produce the stem cells did not survive the process.We feel it necessary to explain that this paper demonstrates that human embryonic stem cells can be grown from single cells, but that the embryos that were used for these experiments did not remain intact, Nature said. Doerflinger also noticed that a series of technical photos used in the Nature article were misleading as well.Theres a picture on page one of the Nature article that has come in for some attention too because its a series of pictures and it looks like a narrative of one embr yo, he explained. The photos appear to show an embryo before and after being harvested for stem cells and then surviving the process,but the pictures are not in fact the same embryo.They were substituting photos to create the impression of a story where the embryos survived the process,but its just not true, he said. So they cooked the photographs, in a sense. Nature claims the article went through a rigorous peer-review process but wont elaborate on who reviewed the article before publication. Its a confidential process,Im afraid,Nature senior press officer Ruth Francis told OSV from Britain. But it was reviewed in the same way as any other Nature paper would be, so theres no question. Other than

Jingsong Chu of Advanced Cell Technology works on making a nutrient-rich broth for cell to feed from at Advanced Cell Technology. The Alameda, Calif., biotech company claimed it had developed a way to grow stem-cell lines from a single cell extracted from a human embryo. PHOTO BY GREGORY URQUIAGA/CONTRA COSTA TIMES/ZUMA PRESS

the initial press release problem, which was corrected,Francis said Nature stands behind the article.

Funding injection
The questions about the accuracy of the research havent,however,adversely affected the financial status of ACT. Within days of the announcement and subsequent national headlines,stock in the company went through the roof [see graphic].One day before the breakthrough news, ACT

had announced it was seeking to raise $11.3 million in new funding.Two days after the announcement,ACT held a conference call with investors where it trumpeted its new stem-cell method and immediately raised $13.5 million from its existing investors,negating the need to raise the $11.3 million from new investors. The funding injection was much needed because the 27employee company was reportedly financially struggling because

of a depressed stock price and other problems. I think they profited from the hype, and they may continue to do so, unfortunately, Doerflinger said. Calls to the companys media contact, James Carbonara, and Lanza, ACT vice president, were not returned.

Little correction
Doerflinger is also concerned that few of the newspapers that initially wrote about the issue ever

Wild financial ride

Since its founding in 1994, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) has struggled to remain a financially viable biotechnology company. In 2005, the company went public and its stock began trading as an Over the Counter Bulletin Board (OTC BB) stock. In February 2005 the stock briefly sold at a high of $7 per share before beginning a steady decline, closing at 27 cents per share on Aug. 21, 2006. On Aug. 22, ACT announced that it planned to raise $11.3 million from private investors. The next day, ACT announced that its scientists had discovered a breakthrough technique to make embryonic stem cells without harm to the primary embryo. The company said the process would mitigate the moral and ethical objections to stem-cell research and pave the way for the federal government, among other sources, to authorize massive funding for embryonic stemcell research. The announcement made headline news throughout the world. On Aug. 25, ACT announced it had raised $13.5 million in new funding from existing investors. Within days, the companys breakthrough technique claim was called into question (see main story). At right are the closing stock prices per share for ACT from Aug. 21 to Aug. 29.

All a sham
Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of the U.S. bishopsprolife office watched the story unfold with intense interest. It turned out that it was all a sham, and they actually did destroy all the embryos, he told Our Sunday Visitor.

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SEPTEMBER 17, 2006 l OUR SUNDAY VISITOR

News Analysis

Afflicted priest searches for pro-life cure

Father Tom Hartman champions pro-life stem-cell research through his foundation
By Stephen James

ather Tom Hartman has always kept his plate

full: Since his ordination in 1971, he has been a parish priest, a radio and TV personality,author and chaplain for the Nassau County Police Department and New York Jets football team.
After his brother died of AIDS, he raised $6 million to build Christa House, a hospice for terminally ill AIDS patients in West Babylon, N.Y. About six years ago, Hartman faced his own personal health challenge when he was diagnosed with Parkinsons disease, an incurable, degenerative neurological disorder that affects more than 1 million Americans,including actor Michael J. Fox and former boxer Muhammad Ali. During a routine trip to his

doctors office for treatment, Father Hartman said he realized that God needed him to raise money to bring about a cure for the disease.In 2004,he established the Thomas Hartman Foundation for Parkinsons Research.

Finding a cure
Father Hartman soon learned that many in the Parkinsons search-for-a-cure community were strong advocates of embryonic stem-cell research, an approach he had expressly forbidden when he set up his own foundation and an approach that goes against the Churchs pro-life v a l u e s s i n ce e m b r yo s a re destroyed in the process. Right from the beginning of our foundation,we put down that we will not participate in embryonic stem-cell research, he told OSV.I sit on the Michael [J.] Fox [Foundation for Parkinsons Research] board,and theyre allocating 9 percent of their money to embryonic stem cells. Almost everyone on the board is in favor of [research using] embryonic stem cells.
God Squad co-host Father Tom Hartman was diagnosed with Parkinsons disease in 2000.
COURTESY OF THOMAS HARTMAN FOUNDATION

This combination picture released Advanced Cell Technology shows a single cell being removed from a human embryo.
AFP PHOTO

bothered to follow up and correct the misinformation they distributed nationwide,and that the erroneous information is now embedded in the public consciousness. The frustration you have with this kind of a story is that you have these front-page announcements and thats what everybody remembers,and then the corrections come in on Page 20 later on.It never quite sticks, he said. The bogus information is then replicated, even by the media. New York Daily News columnist Lenore Skenazy might be one example of the problem. Nearly a week after Nature informed the media of its mistake, Skenazy wrote a column headlined Antistem Zealots Are All Out of Ammo. Citing the discredited ACT breakthrough as fact, Skenazy relentlessly derided stem-cell research opponents and said their objections could no longer be sustained. This [method] does not kill the embryo the way the older method of harvesting stem cells did,she proclaimed. And the spread of misinformation continues.
Stephen James writes from California.

Finding alternatives
Father Hartman set out to

find alternative research methods he could support and contacted a friend who was a scientist at Stanford University. I said Is there a way we can create an alternative to embryonic stem cells? This way those of us who feel very strongly about the human life can have a way of getting involved and seeing if this scientific approach may be more helpful in the future for healing diseases, Father Hartman said. The scientist told the priest about altered nuclear transfer (ANT), a proposed technological approach to obtain human

pluripotent stem cells,which are the functional equivalent of human embryonic stem cells that doesnt involve creating or destroying human embryos. We then proceeded to have 40 scientists and doctors from throughout the world who are experts on embryonic stem cells come in and discuss whether this new method was moral and in accord with the Catholic Church, he said. The group, which included then-Archbishop William Levada of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of the U.S. bishops pro-life office and members of the Bush administration, analyzed and discussed ANT for three days. Father Hartman is also pushing researchers worldwide to collaborate on efforts to find a cure for Parkinsons disease. Anything we do,if we find the cure to Parkinsons, were going to have a leg up on a cure for multiple sclerosis,Alzheimers,mental retardation and Lou Gehrigs disease all of these are going to fall rather quickly after we get the initial insight of neurodegenerative disease, he said. So for our own sake we have to embolden our people and say, We have a chance to come up with a cure if we can all work together.

More states circumvent federal laws on research

Controversies continue as support grows for funding efforts not sanctioned by government
By Stephen James

hile federal law currently pro-

broaden stem-cell research in the state. Romney countered that researchers pushed the envelope beyond the original intent. In 2004, New Jersey became the first state

hibits federal funding for any Varying measures

and embryonic stem-cell research and later that same year,voters in California approved a proposition that allocated $3 billion in bond funding to finance stem-cell research. Although Californias program has been tied up in court challenges, New Jersey has allocated millions each year to its own New Jersey Stem-Cell Institute. The type of research that each state supports varies,according to Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of the U.S. bishops pro-life office.Some states have passed funding measures to support scientific progress, to support biotechnology, that excludes avenues that require destroying embryos, he said. For example, in Maryland theres a new fund for stem-cell research.It doesnt say that any of that has to be embryonic, it says that theyre going to fund the research that looks most promising for treatments. That distinction can be important because the most promising treatments usually involve adult

stem cells instead of embryonic stem cells. The Catholic Church supports adult stemcell treatment because no embryos or lives are harmed in research.

Funding progress
New Jersey channeled most of their funding to adult stem-cell research because patients with 72 different conditions have benefited from adult stem cells so far, while no one has benefited from embryonic stem cells, Doerflinger explained. On the other hand, the California initiative specifies that the top priority of funding will be to research that is not eligible for federal funding. In other words, it will go primarily to embryonic stem cells,to cloning,because the federal government wont fund research that requires destroying embryos, he said. The U.S. bishops and state Catholic conferences are making their voices heard in legislatures and commissions that are considering or implementing laws to increase stemcell research. Weve had mixed success in the states, but I think in the end, more people will realize that the research avenues that are producing treatments are also the ones that are morally acceptable, Doerflinger said.
OUR SUNDAY VISITOR l SEPTEMBER 17, 2006

stem-cell process in which an embryo to appropriate funds specifically for adult is destroyed,state laws on the issue vary widely, and several states have set up their own programs to fund controversial experimentation.
State statutes or executive orders encourage or fund embryonic stem-cell research in California, Connecticut, Mar yland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Illinois. But the laws and regulations in each state can change at any time, as they did in Massachusetts at the end of August when the state adopted new regulations restricting certain research methods. The change there triggered a war of words between Gov. Mitt Romney and scientists at Harvard University,who accused the governor of trying to subvert 2005 legislation intended to