I was disturbed to learn yesterday that Slate has made an editorial retraction of the article "The Celltex Affair" by Carl Elliott, and issued an apology to Glenn McGee, a bioethicist who has been criticized by me and many others for his professional involvement with the troubled Texas stem cell company and RNL Bio licensee, CellTex, at a time when he was also editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Bioethics. The retraction was apparently prompted by allegations of factual error and defamation made initially by David Eller (Celltex CEO), to which Carl Elliot responded, and later by a law firm representing McGee. The excellent blog Retraction Watch has provided a nice summary of the recent developments, and Leigh Turner has posted a thoroughgoing chronicle of the events and issues that surround this case up to the day before Slate's sudden retraction. (Turner's article was published on Feb. 28, while the retraction is dated Feb. 29).
With the intensive scrutiny and crying foul over the past month, I don't know if I have a lot to add to the commentary. I do note that my blog is mentioned in the letters from Eller and DeShazo and Nesbitt, McGee's lawyers, with particular reference to a correction I made to one point in my original post on the ICMS Potemkin investigation of RNL Bio, which had stated the McGee had participated in and authored the report of an investigation of RNL's provision of cells for use in unproven treatments overseas. He emailed me stating that he was not the author of this particular report, but that he wrote a different report specifically on the company's ethical practices. I noted this both in the original post and in the more recent one on his joining CellTex, and apologized for the mistake.
It is clearly vital to get all the facts straight, and I am happy to correct any factual errors discovered in my writing, but equally clearly many of the other disturbing facts of the case remain uncontested, and I have to wonder why Slate would decide to retract such an important story, particularly given Elliot's rebuttal, which I found to be reasonable and compelling. Perhaps Eller's decade-long libel suit against Forbes and journalist William Barrett was more compelling evidence still of the potential cost of engaging millionaires in the courts.
I should further comment on one point in Eller's accusation, which claims "Fact: Dr. McGee has no knowledge as to whether Dr. Ra served on boards" (referring to the participation of RNL Bio CEO Ra Jeong Chan on the Laboratory Advisory Board of the International Cellular Medicine Society in fall of the year when the patient deaths in Japan and China occurred. In fact, I did email Dr McGee on September 10, 2010 at his bioethics.org address prior to writing my first blog post, as I thought at the time that he might be unaware of some important aspects of the ICMS organization.
McGee did not acknowledge or respond to this email, so I cannot say whether he actually read it, but even if he failed to familiarize himself as a director with the members of other boards, he had clear opportunity to do so just by opening his inbox. I therefore do not think this particular defense is valid, and more generally feel Elliot is owed an apology from the editor of Slate for making a retraction when a correction or clarification on several minor points would have sufficed. This is particularly true as the basis for defamation seems to rely largely on intent, and neither Eller nor the McGee lawyers seem to have done anything to show any alleged error was made intentionally on Elliott's part.
Things get even more interesting now that Nature journalist David Cyranoski has published a nifty bit of investigative journalism on March 1, with an accompanying editorial, that lays out how CellTex delivers processed adipose cells to a local physician and pays him a commission to inject them into patients with diseases like multiple sclerosis. What's worse, the Texas Medical Board, a group of 17 political appointees less than half of whom have an MD, has drafted new regulations that appear to suggest that Texas views FDA oversight over the clinical use of investigational agents (such as stem cells) as optional. The feds may tend to disagree, as they showed last year in arresting Fredda Branyon, Vincent Dammai, Alberto Ramon, and Frank Morales for similar practices (although it was allogeneic cord blood in that case, rather than processed autologous adipose cells).
McGee, who did not agree to be interviewed for the March 1 Nature article, abruptly announced his resignation, effective Feb. 28, from CellTex, just three months after joining the company. He also previously stepped down as editor in chief of the American Journal of Bioethics, and says via twitter he is preparing "lengthy, pointed comments on the whole matter."
Given all the many villains and clowns in this big-money drama, we can only hope that McGee opts to redeem himself through full disclosure.
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