Mike Fumento has written two important columns that deserve more attention:
- “Diabetes Foundation Loses its Way”
- “Is Diabetes Cure a Buck Too Far?”

The gist of the columns is that the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International (JDRF) has been so focused on the potential of embryonic stem cell (ESC) research that it has ignored more promising avenues of research based on adult stem cell (ASC) therapies.

Fumento highlights the plight of Dr. Denise Faustman, an eminent Harvard researcher rejected repeatedly by the JDRF. Faustman “was the first to cure diabetes in mice and now seeks funds for a clinical trial to replicate her fantastic results in humans. Thrice she has applied to JDRF; thrice they have rejected her. Never mind her impeccable credentials and that she even reviewed grants for JDRF.”

Her sin, according to Fumento, “seems to be that her treatment involves restoring dead insulin-producing cells in the pancreas with ASCs already present in the body. Despite what the JDRF would have you think, there have already been tremendous breakthroughs in ASC therapy, with over 80 treatments and almost 300 human clinical trials underway – versus zero treatments or trials for ESCs. Still, nothing would belie the false claims of ESC lobbyists more than curing diabetes with ASCs.”

According to Fumento, his syndicate, Scripps Howard News Service, declined to publish the second of the two columns. Fumento says his editor described it as a “diatribe.”

Wesley Smith, an author of numerous books on medical ethics, responds:

What? Fumento’s tone is utterly reasonable. The facts about which he opines are indisputable. Indeed, SCIENCE DID publish the study demonstrating that adult spleen stem cells completely cured mice with late stage juv. diabetes. Despite this amazing success, the JDRF DID refuse to fund human trials. Finally, the JDRF DID fund Proposition 71, which created a right to therapeutic cloning, to the tune of about $2 million. Yet, even IF that technology EVER becomes an effective treatment for juv. diabetes, it is at least a decade or more away.

This raises an important question: Is the JDRF most interested in finding a cure for juvenile diabetes or in promoting embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic human cloning?…

More comment at The Brothers Judd and The Reform Club.