It’s Sad When TPM Is More Honest About Christine O’Donnell Than FrumForum

TPM is on a mission to paint Christine O’Donnell as crazy.  That’s what TPM does, just as they have been doing to Sharron Angle for months.

TPM is what it is, but at least it is more honest than whomever does the posting at FrumForum.

TPM’s latest headline (based on a Little Green Footballs post) is that O’Donnell complained in 2007 when she appeared on O’Reilly about cloning.  Here is the TPM headline: 

O’Donnell In 2007: Scientists Have Created Mice With Human Brains!

Here is O’Donnell’s partial quote, which is generating the headlines:

“They are — they are doing that here in the United States. American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains. So they’re already into this experiment.”

TPM, however, noted that while the “fully functioning human brains” wording was an overstatement, there were in fact experiments being conducted injecting human brain cells into mice.  TPM, to its credit, links to a Washington Post article:

By injecting human embryonic stem cells into the brains of fetal mice inside the womb, scientists in California have created living mice with working human brain cells inside their skulls.

The research offers the first proof that human embryonic stem cells — vaunted for their potential to turn into every kind of human cell, at least in laboratory dishes — can become functional human brain cells inside a living animal, reaching out to make connections with surrounding brain cells.

Even Alan Colmes pointed out the context that

a Stanford researcher did ask his ethics board for an opinion on the ethics of creating chimeric mice with 100 percent human brain cells, according to The Washington Post. But that experiment was never conducted.

Tell me that O’Donnell, during the course of an O’Reilly interview, should have stated “fully functioning human brain cells” instead of “fully functioning human brain” — and I’ll say fine.  Tell me that O’Donnell should have indicated that the request to create mice with 100 percent human brain cells was an ethics opinion request not a planned experiment, and I’ll also say fine.

Such nuance, as we know, always takes place during television interviews.  And of course, TPM’s headline itself inaccurately characterized O’Donnell’s comments because she mentioned experiments, not results.

But FrumForum simply ran the LGF post without context  or analysis, including Charles’ characterization that the discussion was “stunningly moronic.”

I guess it takes one to know one.

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Tags: 2010 Election

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