ON THE CUTTING EDGE: AP Interpretation Of Stem Cell Studies At Odds With Other Reports – And The Studies Themselves!
The Stiletto planned to take issue with the pronounced political slant in The Associated Press report on three studies evaluating the efficacy of injecting stem cells derived from a heart patient’s own bone marrow into portions of heart muscle damaged by heart attack – but James Taranto beat her to it on OpinionJournal:
"Using stem cells harvested from patients' own bone marrow, researchers reported Wednesday that they improved cardiac function in heart attack patients months, years--and even decades--after the patients suffered their attacks," reports the Los Angeles Times …
[H]ere is how the Associated Press reported the same study:
Giving heart attack survivors stem cells from their own bone marrow did little to repair their damaged hearts, according to the three best studies to date of this controversial therapy.
The Stiletto also checked several other popular news sources, and found that AP’s negative take was, um, unique. This is from HealthDay News:
Two German trials that used injected stem cells to strengthen the heart muscle after a heart attack got good results, while a small Norwegian trial showed no benefit.
All three trials used stem cells derived from bone marrow. Perhaps the best results came from the largest trial, done at the University of Frankfurt, which enlisted 204 patients, half of whom had stem cells injected three to seven days after a heart attack. Four months later, the injection fraction - a measure of the heart's ability to pump blood -- was significantly better in patients who got the stem cells. …
The findings were menza-menz for Bloomberg News:
Bone-marrow cells injected into the coronary arteries of heart-attack patients modestly improved the heart's ability to pump, studies by German researchers found.
The studies are the latest efforts to follow up on tantalizing evidence in animals that suggest stem cells injected into the heart may be able to regenerate or repair damaged tissue. The studies aren't decisive, and a third, smaller study from Norway found the cells didn't help at all.
WebMD characterized the results of the studies as "promising" but unproven:
European researchers report promising results from clinical trials to test whether injections of bone marrow cells can repair heart attack damage.
Bone marrow cells - a mixture of cells obtained from a patient's own bone marrow - are thought by some scientists to contain stem cells that can become heart muscle cells or blood vessel cells.
That hasn't been proved.
As Taranto notes, there is a marked political bias in the AP article:
Which interpretation of the findings is right? Probably this is one of those half-empty/half-full situations, and either is defensible. But note how the AP waits only until the second paragraph to go off on a tangent about "the need to lift political limits on using cells from embryos, which offer more promise." (The L.A. Times piece goes off on this tangent, but later in its report and without taking sides.) Isn't it clear that the AP reporter has an agenda beyond reporting the news?
Here’s what the AP wrote that got his – and The Stiletto’s – hackles up:
The modest results suggest more study is needed and, some scientists say, demonstrate the need to lift political limits on using cells from embryos, which offer more promise for turning into heart-repairing tissue.
HealthDay News plays the story straight, and does not make any reference to the political controversy surrounding President Bush’s ban on funding research on embryonic stem cells with government (that is to say, tax) dollars – in fact, there was no mention of embryonic stem cells at all.
The Los Angeles Times does mention embryonic stem cells, but omits the political angle. The Stiletto notes with appreciation that the paper also provided an accurate summary of the state of scientific knowledge regarding embryonic stem cells – and explained why adult sources were preferable for these studies:
Stem cells present one of the most tantalizing mysteries in medicine. One form, known as embryonic stem cells, are capable of generating any type of tissue in the body, but scientists haven't learned the biochemical means to transform them.
The current study focused on a second type of cells known as adult stem cells. There are many types, each focused on regenerating a specific group of tissues to help the body repair normal wear and tear.
Stem cells from bone marrow have been used for decades to regenerate blood and immune cells in cancer patients. Laboratory experiments suggest that these cells also can make heart muscle, blood vessels, nerve cells and other tissues.
The advantage of bone marrow stem cells is that they are easy to extract and can be collected from the same patients they will be used to treat, avoiding problems of tissue rejection.
In contrast, the Bloomberg News report did not explicitly inform readers which type of stem cell was used, adult or embryonic. The lede mentioned "bone marrow cells injected into coronary arteries"; the fifth paragraph explained that the patients had "bone marrow drawn from their hips"; and the sixth paragraph discussed the results four months after patients "got their own cells back." All other references were to "stem cells." If a reader were skimming the article (s)he may have missed these somewhat subtle references to adult stem cells and assumed that embryonic stem cells were used, since that’s the type that the MSM normally focus on.
Curiously, the WebMD article described the injections as "stem cells" only once, and otherwise refers to them as "bone marrow cells."
For anyone who wants to read abstracts of the three studies from the September 21 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine to judge the coverage for themselves, here are the links:
† Intracoronary Injection of Mononuclear Bone Marrow Cells in Acute Myocardial Infarction
† Intracoronary Bone Marrow–Derived Progenitor Cells in Acute Myocardial Infarction
† Transcoronary Transplantation of Progenitor Cells after Myocardial Infarction
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