After a deeply troubled chapter, Chapters 8 and 9 of Tom Bethell’s “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science” return us at least to discussing science. Here Bethell updates us all on his version of the sciences of cloning and stem-cells. His main argument is that these sciences are very difficult, thus they will probably fail to provide us the benefits that they have so oversold. However, as he amply points out, the scientists are cautionary for the most part, it’s media and politics that have grabbed onto this one. However, before I get ahead of myself…
Summary of Bethell’s Points
Chapter 8: Cloning
Bethell spends a great deal of time pointing out how many failures scientists had to endure before the successful cloning of the sheep Dolly. He spends a bit of time on some vague questions about Dolly’s authenticity before assenting that “few scientists today question whether Dolly was cloned from an adult.” He then lists a few other animals that have been cloned including dogs, cattle, and cats. Then, he makes a few unsourced comments about the $1 million cost of cloning pets, and asserts that cloning will never be a viable means of animal husbandry. Finally, he transitions to attacking stem cell research with is the subject of the next chapter.
Chapter 9: Stem Cells
He begins chapter 9 by telling the embryonic stem cell research story, essentially starting with the first news in 2001 that stem cells helped cure Parkinson’s in some rats and mice up to the work during the summer of 2005 in South Korea that produced stem cell lines from adult DNA. It’s a story of a science in its infancy, with scientists very much divided over the potential of stem cell science. He focuses, like in the previous chapter, on pointing out how hard it is to get stem cells to behave as scientists want them. Specifically, once embryonic stem cells are created, it is very difficult to get them to produce a specialized type of cells. If this is not done properly, a horrible cancerous blob of cells known as a teratoma can result. Feeling his case well proven, he finishes the chapter with this quote:
The case of stem cells suggests that new ideas today are likely to enjoy a rather different reception: first hailed as true, then bolstered by religious opposition, and finally acknowledged as false
My response
These two chapters can be pretty well summarized in just a few points:
- A potentially promising medical science technology receives vastly disproportionate media coverage
- This promising technology, still in its earliest stages receives criticism and acclaim for each success and failure
- For Bethell in this book, the successes are then ridiculed, the failures are trumpeted
- Evidence of the difficulty of the science is used to make the logical conclusion that it will never become a viable method of treatment
Bethell’s primary argument, that because these sciences are hard they will never succeed, is obviously not logically sound. He is, however very much correct to be skeptical of the wilder claims of these types of research, however his attempts to pin these claims on the scientists themselves is misguided. It is the public’s vast enthusiasm for breakthrough medicine that exaggerates the significance of each individual result and study in cloning and stem cell research.
Other than an fallacious argument and a few cautionary tidbits, there is so little content in these chapters that they seem somewhat hastily arranged. Bu, more absent than content is any real focus, and the facts that he presents within these directionless pages are again made suspect by his terribly lax citation. I am not saying that he is making up results, just that when one is writing about a controversial and rapidly changing scientific topic, not citing exact sources can make verification incredibly difficult.
So, after extracting a little nugget of value from these two chapters about the dangers of scientific findings being over-stated by the media, you can ignore the rest of these chapters unless you are interested in an incomplete and questionably reliable account of the history of cloning and embryonic stem cell research.
