Deception in the Stem Cell Research Debate Nobel laureates' inaccurate letter to President Bush urging him to provide federal funding for embryonic stem cell research Humans had public relations value in the media. It perpetuates a number of misconceptions and misleading claims regarding stem cell research, particularly embryonic stem cell research versus adult stem cell research, and will serve to continue to cloud the issue. Some of these misleading claims are the subject of this essay. I believe President Bush and his staff are well aware of the truth about embryonic versus adult stem cell research. Unfortunately, many in the public will read about this letter, recognize some high profile "icons" or simply that there are many "smart people" who have signed on and will think they know all about this scientific research. Informed people do not always perpetuate the truth. President Bush and Congress obviously have the final say on how federal research funds will be spent. The hope is that everyone participating in this debate will be fully informed of the facts and will not be influenced by celebrities who are unfortunately misinformed or deliberately misled, but rather will weigh both the scientific and ethical evidence. There is a lot of misinformation and deception going on in press reports on the stem cell debate. This is probably the worst problem in this whole debate, the perpetuation (innocent or otherwise) of misleading claims that obscure many of the real facts. The Nobel Prize letter itself is a prime example of "mixmaster" treatment of the facts. What is usually missing from press reports are some key "adjectives" that clarify the situation, defining whether the cells discussed are human or animal cells and especially whether they are "embryonic" or "adult" stem cells. For example, the letter sent to President Bush states that "insulin-secreting cells normalized blood glucose in diabetic mice." These experiments were conducted with ADULT stem cells from mice, NOT with embryonic stem cells. In fact, there are no reports yet of anyone being able to produce insulin-secreting cells from human embryonic stem cells, but ADULT human insulin-secreting stem cells HAVE been isolated. The letter promulgates the claim (made repeatedly in NIH documents) that adult stem cells do not have the same potential as embryonic stem cells, which in theory can form any tissue. But studies done with adult stem cells (studies that mirror those done with embryonic stem cells) show that adult stem cells have the ability to form essentially any tissue.