A Few Words on Hype and Hope
A Few Words on Hype and Hope
Every so often a story about stem cell research comes out headlined “hype and hope.” One of the frequent criticisms of embryonic stem cell research is that it is offering false hope to patients who believe they will be cured by treatments that are actually not even in the pre-clinical stage yet. The “liberal media” is sometimes accused of distorting the facts. Etc.
We live in a country where people are susceptible to irrational beliefs of all sorts. People believe in crystals, horoscopes, angels, homeopathic medicines, expensive ionized water, shark cartilage, etc. They buy lottery tickets. They do apparently silly things out of love. They can be to the left or to the right—the spectrum of irrationality is often universal and unrelated to ideologies. It is not always a bad thing to be irrational—creativity and beauty can come out of this. And on the other hand some mentally ill people can be very rational within their own world-view, even if the world view seems crazy to everyone else.
As far as medical or health decisions go, people also are poorly educated about science, about logical and analytical thinking in general, about good decision making processes and ways to analyze credibility of sources. School are busy teaching to tests, jobs are demanding high productivity, entertainment is vacuous; there isn’t a lot of place in our culture for thoughtfulness. So it is hardly surprising that people who are very ill cling to whatever shred of possibility they can find, no matter how irrational it may be at the time. I have worked with the families of people who died from cancer, and every patient approaches illness—and treatment—differently.
Casting the stem cell debates in terms of how much hope is offered is a dead-end road. Scientists can’t be responsible for what people think, or don’t think; people need to take ownership of their own ideas. (There will always be a few people promoting snake oil, of course, but that’s not the overall way in which scientists present their research.) A much more useful way of framing or discussing the issue would be to consider the ways knowledge connects to power—whether individual, as in autonomy, or within a group—and the roles different knowledges take on in our culture(s). Instead of blaming researchers for giving false hope, or criticizing patients for not being critical enough of claims, let’s talk instead about ways to promote knowing. In all areas.
