Save Proposal 2 - The Uninformed to the Rescue!

With Proposal 2 support lagging, one of it's biggest supporters, the Detroit Free Press, is attempting to come to the rescue. In the last two days, they've printed 3 editorials, one by the editorial board, one by staff writer Rochelle Riley and one by guest editorialist Rev. Charles Adams, in favor of Proposal 2.

The fact that none of them know the first thing about stem cell research or what Proposal 2 would do is no impediment to the Free Press. It's almost like had a staff meeting and decided the needed editorials and it didn't matter who wrote them. Rev. Adams seems to think Michigan is the only place African-American embryos could be killed to create stem cell lines. Rochelle Riley didn't take the time to actually research what happened in the Tuskegee experiments (the men with syphillis weren't given syphillis, they already had it). They all seem to think passing that killing human embryos in Michigan instead of importing embryonic stem cell lines is going to miraclously lead to cures.

The editorials are all a response to a commerical against Proposal 2 which notes Proposal 2's attempt to allow unrestricted research on human embryos and prevent any laws which would "discourage" or "create disincentives" for researchers and then compares this to the unethical treatment of African-American men in the Tuskegee experiments.

The Free Press editorial claims,

"The commercial says, falsely, that stem cell research won't be regulated, and implies that it could therefore lead to abuses similar to the Tuskegee experiments, in which researchers denied treatment and information about their disease to hundreds of African-American who were infected with syphillis."

Ummm.... if the research would be regulated then why did a previous Free Press editorial in favor of Proposal 2 state,

Proposal 2 would have been better with some provision built in for the possibility of state regulation of this research. Instead, it has a blanket ban on restrictions.

The Detroit Free Press editorial board has made mistakes on the stem cell issue in the past where they don't know what's in their news section (for example: continuously calling the state's law preventing research on human embryos an "embryonic stem cell research ban"). Now in their attempt to defend a horrible proposal, they're disavowing what they wrote in a previous editorial.