Snake Oil Salesmen Fool Peter Jackson
The embryonic stem cell (ESC) snake oil* con has fooled another. It's latest victim. Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings movies (and Fran Walsh)has contibuted US $310,000 of his own money to the 'cause'. His reasoning?

Stem cell therapy has the potential to treat a multitude of diseases and illnesses which up until now have been labelled ‘incurable

Pity Peter did put his money into something that would actually help people, like adult stem cell research. The current tally for treatments from ASC is around 70. For ESC it is a big zero, despite all the funding.

*Snake Oil: - the most common usage of the words is as a derogatory term for medicines to imply that they are fake, fraudulent, and usually ineffective. The expression is also applied metaphorically to any product with exaggerated marketing but questionable or unverifiable quality.

Joe Carter has a bit more on the current push in the US government to fund ESC.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Tuesday, July 18, 2006