Cell mates. (Letters).

In his November story about the failure of journalists to reveal stem cell scientists' potential conflicts of interest, Neil Munro claims that I "denied" there is a problem ("Dr. Who?," November). I certainly did not. What I told him in a rather lengthy telephone interview is that reporters like myself face a difficult situation as we decide when to mention scientists' increasingly long list of affiliations that might influence their judgement on matters of science policy. Certainly reporters are sometimes less than diligent about telling readers all they should about the experts they quote. But discriminating wisdom must be brought to bear since many corporate affiliations are effectively irrelevant and because many non-corporate influences have an equally large influence on the positions that scientists take--such as religion or having a relative with a disease that might be cured by stem cells--which for the most part we don't feel compelled to expose. These are complicated and important journalistic questions, but the reading public is not helped when reporters reduce that nuanced reality into a black-and-white story about good guys and bad guys.

RICK WEISS
Staff Writer, The Washington Post

While the issue of financial conflict of interest is an important one, it is equally important to be factually correct in suggesting that such a conflict exists. Advanced Tissue Sciences of La Jolla, Calif., is cited by Neil Munro in his article in the context of such potential conflicts given my writing about human cloning and embryonic stem cell research. This elicits a quote from Ms. Dean, a science editor at The New York Times. Alas, Mr. Munro failed to check his facts with regard to Advanced Tissue Sciences. That company was on the record stating that human cloning and human embryonic stem cell research were not part of its work scope. Thus, there is no conflict, actual or potential, with regard to my association.

JEROME GROOPMAN, M.D.
Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Mass.

Neil Munro responds: In my article I accurately described Weiss's comments to me; I also explained, in some detail, his thoughts about the various non-financial interests with which scientists must deal. As for Dr. Groopman, my article did not say, nor did I mean it to imply, that his company, Advanced Tissue Sciences, intended to conduct research on stem-cells from embryos. But as I pointed out in the relevant section of my article, advocates of embryo-cell research commonly argue that it will yield discoveries and techniques that will broadly benefit many companies, especially tissue-regeneration companies such as ATS. So while Dr. Groopman does not, as be says, have an immediate financial stake in cloning technology, it's fair to say that the fortunes of ATS--before its recent bankruptcy, that is--were inevitably connected to those of companies that did conduct stem-cell research.