Bogus Gold

A word of advice to one of our foundering local newspapers: Don't allow scientifically illiterate columnists to file columns about cutting edge new medical treatments without subjecting them to some fact checking by someone, oh I dunno, NOT scientifically illiterate perhaps. Let's take today's column by Bob Shaw for example.

Shaw thinks he's found an interesting angle to give his column. One can see why he thinks so. It has an attention grabbing "stem cell" angle. It has dogs getting better treatment than people. It's got a miracle breakthrough cure. And so, understandably, Shaw launches in with the zest of a modern day Zola...

Stem cells can cure the dog, but the human has to wait

Glen Kothe is jealous of his dog.

The pooch was plagued for a year with a cartilage tear in his rear leg. Today, the dog seems to be healed, thanks to controversial stem cell treatments.

"I asked the vet, 'When you are done with my dog, can you do the same thing for me?' " Kothe said.

The answer was no — proof that in some ways, the American medical system is working better for dogs than for humans.

Wow! Doesn't that just zing you in the gut? How could we let this happen? People are being treated worse than dogs by our health care system! Feel the outrage!

Except... well as Shaw tries to explain further his case begins to unravel. And it's at this point a fact checker might have been useful, as Shaw seems entirely unaware as the unraveling occurs. Let's take a look...

Stem cell treatments for people are mired in politics, religion and a complicated approval process. But there are no such hurdles for animals.

Not exactly. Stem cell treatments are only mired in that "complicated approval process" (we'll get to why the "politics and religion" issue isn't applicable here a bit later.). And that is because, due to matters of law and ethics, treatments must be proven safe before they are allowed to be performed on humans. Without going into too much detail, it's fair to say we set the standard a bit lower when it comes to animal rather than human safety.

The strange thing here is that this concept seems to be both new and shocking to Shaw, who reports on it in a sophomoric manner...

For example, dogs can get a vaccine for Lyme disease. People can't. Cattle have access to reproductive technology that childless human couples don't.

"It is a little curious," said Jeffrey Kahn, director of the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics. "I guess there should be some thought about investing resources to support animal health without supporting human health. Why do animals get better access to newer treatments?"

The reason is that animal research is easy and cheap. A scientist seeking to develop a new drug for animals can readily find a large group to test effectiveness, side effects and proper dosing.

What if one of them gets hurt? It's not even close to the legal or moral nightmare of an injury to a human.

"You have way more attorneys representing humans than animals," said Dr. Wayne Scanlon, the veterinarian who helped Kothe's dog.

Umm... right. And, I hasten to add, this is generally considered a feature rather than a flaw in our medical system. We test on animals before we test on humans. And that was considered the right thing to do well before the first lawyer started chasing an ambulance.

The reasoning here is rather plain, but oddly it seems to be the opposite to how Shaw spins it. We are more cautious approving new treatments for humans than we are for animals because we value human life more, not less. There are serious risks (well beyond the threat of lawsuits) involved when you start performing medical experiments on people. There are risks for animals too of course, but once again we're talking about which one should be more protected here.

I state this rather obvious matter for a reason. Shaw apparently never gave this matter much thought until just now, as he continues...

Kahn said there has been great concern about harm done to animals through animal testing. But there are benefits from being on science's cutting edge — and animals often reap them, he said.

Scanlon sometimes dabbles with made-for-human products when dealing with sick animals.

"I have called a doctor friend of mine and said that I am having no luck with a certain bacterial infection in an animal," Scanlon said. "We will try a human-licensed product."

See, he stumbled right over the main issue yet didn't quite see it. He's reporting as if no one has ever discovered that there are separate research and approval tracks for treating dogs and humans, and that human treatment is more carefully regulated. But in fact this is well known by all but the most cranial deprived among his readers. Further, in an implicit endorsement of the guinea pig lifestyle, Shaw gives no acknowledgment that there may be a down side to "being on science's cutting edge."

As if the matter of animal versus human experimentation has been sufficiently addressed, we then race back into the stem cell matter...

Stem cells have been hailed as nature's jack-of-all-trades, capable of morphing into nerves, organs and other tissues. But the cells were found in embryos, and since the 1980s the U.S. government has banned embryonic stem cell research.

In 2003, a San Diego company called VetStem began offering stem cell treatments to horses. The process doesn't involve embryos. Instead, the company is able to take a small piece of an animal's fat — a good repository for stem cells — and isolate and concentrate the cells.

The stem cell controversy is not relevant to this article even though Shaw thinks it is. Here is where that fact-checker could have really cleared things up for Mr. Shaw.

1. There are many types of stem cells, obtained from many different sources.


2. Only those obtained from human embryos are embroiled in ethical controversy.


3. And that controversy pertains to the source of research material, not its availability for human treatment because...


4. There are no known treatments for humans or animals involving embryonic stem cells due to a host of yet-to-be overcome scientific challenges regardless of the ethics.


5. The treatment being discussed in this column does not involve the embryonic kind of stem cells anyway, ergo it's not associated to these other issues.


6. There are many human treatments using non-embryonic stem cells already in use today.

I'll skip ahead a bit through the explanation about how this specific treatment came from the research lab to treating Glen Kothe's dog. In summary, the dog in question got the treatment and seems to be doing well from it.

Then we come to the crux of the matter...

[The veteranarian who treated Kothe's dog] is bothered by the injustice of Micah getting better medical care than his owners.

"I do not understand why this wouldn't work on people," Scanlon said. "It is ludicrous not to work along the same lines."

Hear, hear! How can medical researches be such idiots as to not think of applying this treatment to humans?!

In fact, Johnson said, human trials for the technique are under way. But it could take years before the stem cell treatments are widely available.

Oh.

So, umm... We're still outraged by the delay, right? Surely Shaw is about to point to some kind of ridiculous red-tape in the approval process that needs reform. I mean this is about speeding up approval for human treatments to be more aligned with treating animals, surely he's got some kind of evidence that the human approval process is unnecessarily lengthy. We surely don't want humans treated as carelessly as we might treat dogs, right?

In the meantime, Scanlon [that's the vet - ed.] said, other countries easily could leapfrog the U.S.

"You will probably be able to go down to Mexico and get it done," he said.

If the treatments become available for humans, Scanlon knows one willing customer.

"I have one knee that is barking at me" from arthritis, he said. "I would love to see some of my own fat injected into my knee."

So wait a moment. The justification for speeding up the approval process for human treatment amounts to:

1. Dogs don't have their treatments as rigorously tested as humans before approval
2. Mexico's example of quality medical care should shame us.
3. Some veterinarian would really like his bum knee treated.

Not exactly an airtight case, but at least he's made a shot at it. I'm no fan of big government, but he certainly hasn't sold me yet.

This is not, however the headline may blare, a case that has anything to do with the Great Controversial Embryonic Stem Cell Debate™ (which really shouldn't be so controversial anymore as there is a new technique for achieving pluripotency in adult stem cells negating the need for an embryonic cell source, but if Shaw isn't savvy enough to know he's not even talking about that debate, I wouldn't expect him to have kept up on such things).

Anyway there are two very basic problems with this column. The first is that Shaw is opining in an area of science he apparently lacks very basic knowledge about (Science-journalism: All the whiz-bang and drama of science fiction, without the realization they're frequently making stuff up). The second is that Shaw's point isn't even about what he thinks it is, but seems to rather be a call to lessen the regulatory burden on bringing medical treatments to market; with a kind of endorsement that the medical standards for dogs should be good enough for us.