Diabetes Foundation Loses Its Way.(Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, ethical and economical aspects regarding research and use of embryonic stem cells)(Editorial)

The slick Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International (JDRF) flyer that appeared in Sunday newspapers throughout the country showed a little girl on monkey bars with her hand just inches from the next bar. "The cure is so close we can almost touch it," her accompanying mother says. Likewise, JDRF Chairwoman Mary Tyler Moore proclaimed in a recent TV commercial, "We are so close to finding a cure."

So wrong. JDRF is the world's largest juvenile diabetes philanthropy, distributing over $85 million in grants last year. Yet it supports no efforts that seem likely to lead to a cure any time soon for this blinding and crippling disease that afflicts as many as 1.7 million Americans. Instead it's become a lobby for controversial embryonic stem cell (ESC) research and refuses to help fund the only study that apparently could soon bring a cure.

Don't take my word for it. On the JDRF website's "stem cell information" page you'll find more links to ESC advocacy articles, editorials/Op-eds, and testimonies than a German wurst-maker has links.

"For further information" it refers readers to a single group - - the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research. But the only research CAMR seeks to advance concerns embryos; indeed, it's the nation's largest ESC lobbying group. JDRF was one of the eight founding members of CAMR in 2000 and the 2001 CAMR chairman was Lawrence Soler, currently a vice president with JDRF.

JDRF's chairman of program development, Gail Pressberg, is a senior fellow for the Civil Society Institute, which periodically releases slanted-question polls to persuade the federal and state governments to spend more on ESC research. Speaking of one such poll intended to support a New Jersey ESC bond initiative, Pressberg said in a press release, "This survey shows widespread support in New Jersey for letting the public decide the fate of state funding for stem-cell research." As ESC backers so often do, she left out the word "embryonic" to obfuscate the issue.

The top item on JDRF's "issue information" page is "Embryonic Stem Cell Research," with subcategories like "Progress with Embryonic Stem Cell Research." It also bashes what many see as an alternative that's both medically superior and carries no moral baggage - - adult stem cells (ASCs). Its "Limitations of Adult Stem Cell Research" link is packed with such disinformation as "Adult stem cells cannot be induced to develop into any cell type." In fact, since 2002 at least four different labs have published results indicating they can.

Now try the American Diabetes Association web site. You won't see glorification of ESCs or bashing of ASCs. Those folk only seem to care about diabetes, not politics.