60 Minutes and Stem Cells.(criticism of news magazine show 60 Minutes)

The CBS news magazine 60 Minutes prides itself on asking the hard questions that other television news vehicles are too polite, or perhaps too afraid, to ask. That tough-minded approach to an important issue wasn't much in evidence, however, when 60 Minutes recently took on the question of whether "spare" embryos "left over" from in vitro fertilization procedures should be used for stem-cell research that would result in the embryos' death.

During the segment, Princeton's Robert P. George, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, tried to explain certain basic moral facts to Leslie Stahl. Cryogenically preserved embryos, Professor George said, "have the dignity of a human being, the way a full-grown man or woman has the dignity of a human being."

Ms. Stahl wasn't persuaded. Referring to the embryos as "these little bunches of cells," she asked, in some evident bewilderment, "Are you equating them [with grown men and women]?" Yes, he was, Professor George replied, because "those bunches of cells are very unique bunches of cells. Those are human beings in the earliest stages of their natural development. You were one once; I was one once."

The editing of the segment strongly suggested that 60 Minutes preferred the approach of the University of Pennsylvania's Dr. Arthur Caplan, an enthusiast for research that, as he put it, would destroy "embryos ... that no one will ever use for any purpose whatsoever." That, of course, is the conventional wisdom in the bioethics guild, which frequently serves as a permission-slip factory for scientists and the biotech industry. Had Ms. Stahl wanted to put Art Caplan through the typical 60 Minutes grinder, she could have asked some really tough questions:

"Dr. Caplan, isn't it true that there isn't a single embryonic stem-cell therapy at even the earliest stage of FDA clinical trials?"

"Dr. Caplan, what are we to make of the fact that, to date, embryonic stem cells can't be used therapeutically because they cause tumors in the animals into which they've been injected? And what are we to make of the fact that, because of the biological complexities involved, no one understands, or is even close to understanding, why ...