Whenever a scientific finding could become important for the improvement of human health, the press will quickly herald it as a breakthrough. But similarly, when things take a sour turn, they are hastily reported as major calamities. The first full-scale clinical trial of fetal-tissue transplantation to treat Parkinson's disease, the results of which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, is a good example. The study reported that none of 40 patients with Parkinson's disease who received sham or fetal cell transplants had noticed improvements in their condition. Moreover, most clinical assessments were also negative. One key finding was that 15% of patients who had received the fetal cells developed dyskinesias reminiscent of those induced by treatment with l-DOPA. So how did the news media report the story?

“Parkinson's miracle cure turns into a catastrophe.”

The Guardian (UK, 13 March)

The article then features quotes from Dr Paul Greene, one of the neurologists involved in the work. Describing the side-effects, Dr Greene is quoted as saying: “It was tragic, catastrophic. And we can't selectively turn it off ... No more foetal transplants.”

Robert Meadowcroft, director of policy and research at the Parkinson's Disease Society in the UK, said to The Independent (UK, 14 March) that the results were disappointing but that, in his view, they did not spell the end of any attempt to 'seed' the brain with either fetal cells, or in the future, stem cells.

Perhaps predictably, the heady mixture of the vexed ethical issue about the use of fetal transplants for medical treatments and the spectre of potentially irreversible side-effects from a treatment previously hailed as a 'miracle cure' proved harder to resist for some newspapers.