Science vs. op-ed piece on stem cell research

John Leo, in an op-ed piece about stem cell research in the New York Daily News:

Stem cell research is likely to help with Parkinson's and other diseases, but is hyped (falsely) as a probable Alzheimer's cure because few Americans fear Parkinson's or Lou Gehrig's disease but a majority is terrified of Alzheimer's.

Now let's hear from an actual scientist:

In fact, argued Mark Mehler, stem cells offer the only real hope for repairing the damage Alzheimer's does to brain cells and cellular connections built up over a lifetime.

"Our ability to repair damage to the nervous system has to be focused on not just giving back the cells that have died, but giving them back in a way that allows them to incorporate" into neural networks, Mehler, who directs the Institute for Brain Disorders and Neural Regeneration at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, told The Scientist. "We have to supply them in the way that they were originally generated during development through activation and maturation of endogenous adult stem cells from brain regions adjacent to the sites of irrevocable cell injury and death."

Over the past 2 years, Mehler and his colleagues have found increasing evidence that the process that leads to cell death in Alzheimer's actually begins during early embryonic development, suggesting that such vulnerable cells could be repaired with gene therapy or even replaced by stem cells

Leo also claims Bush's 24.7 million in federal funding is a great thing, even though that number is less than a quarter of what Bush actually promised. And I'm sure the people with family members inflicted with Lou Gerhig's disease and Parkinson's appreciate Leo's sympathy, too.

I'm not sure anyone is claiming that more federal funding for stem cell research is going to bring about instant cures for anything, but certainly anything that hold this much promise should get as much help as humanly possible.

How do people like this get a weekly newspaper piece, anyway?