A doctor who read the blog writes

One of the consequences of the sloppy language used for stem cell activity is that “adult stem cell” research really is bone marrow transplant or hematopoietic(blood forming cells…) stem cell transplantation, very well elucidated techniques.

Now, when bone marrow transplants, a 50 year old therapy, is used to cure a disease with new conditioning regimens (regimens that either kill immune cells which would “eat” the stem cells or create a “space” in the bone marrow garden for the stem cells to grow), the headline is “stem cell cure.” Which is the wrong message.

Glancing over a headline, I see “Stem cell cure.” And then move on.

The attempt to change the language may be late. These are truly not “adult” stem cells. Just hematopoietic stem cells. And the “adult” bit, well that was for some other ideology stuff that served both sides of this battle. That nomenclature was painful to me. It was unnecessarily new and unclear. (Whoever is advising folks on using these terms needs to be fired.) The headline battle will kill opposition to embryonic stem cell research, though. It gets lumped in everyone’s heads as the same: “Stem cells.” Which then equals, embryonic stem cells.

The only reason I stopped and read this article is because of the title, wondering what the possibility would be if embryonic stem cells showed efficacy. I expected this article to be about embryonic stem cells. It was not.

The opposition’s language needs clarity.

I’m afraid I don’t follow your point. The only time I’ve seen reference to “adult stem cells” has been in reference to stuff like cord blood. I’ve never seen it used in reference to stuff like the treatment in the article. And, indeed, this article while stupidly titled, seems to have nothing to do with those who are pitting “adult” vs. “embryonic stem cells”. It seems to have just been given the title it has because some editor at Nature thinks stem cells are trendy and so he linked the treatment to this hot topic in the news. So while I grant your point that people making political hay might wrongly toss around terms like “adult stem cell” where it doesn’t belong for the sake of scoring “See! Adult stem cells work and ESCR doesn’t!” points, I don’t see that this article is trying to do that and I’ve not run across people who do.