While our intrepid production intern Keith Axline was preparing images for a cord blood story that will be live on the site at 2:00 a.m. tomorrow, he found an image that was perfect for the story. The only problem was, the caption was utterly wrong:
Yes, the president was signing H.R. 2520. The name of the bill is also correct, even though it should be wrong, since it has nothing to do with stem cell research. The act creates a national network of cord blood, integrating it with the current bone marrow donor system.
The glaring error lies in this phrase: "to expand federal support of embryonic stem cell research." It's actually pretty funny. Did anyone tell National Right to Life that Bush threw more government money at embryonic stem cell research? Probably not, since he didn't. This bill has nothing to do with embryonic stem cell research.
But the typo seems to indicate that people who were trying to spin this bill as an alternate to the Embryonic Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, which has passed the House but Bush has promised to veto, have done their job well. They have confused regular folks, including Associated Press caption-writers, enough to make them believe that the bill the president is signing in this picture actually has something to do with embryonic stem cell research.
