SwiftVets.com

[ProudDaughterofVet]

My friends..
As a matter of full disclosure, I do not support embryonic stem cell reseach, due to my faith based beliefs..however, in respect for all of us here I am not here to preach what I believe..I would like all of you to read the column in todays Washington Post by Charles Krauthammer..he himself in a wheelchair due to a spinal cord injury. In case you did not know he is also a MD..if you need any help with those out there in this arguement, I suggest you read them this column..



An Edwards Outrage

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 15, 2004; Page A23

After the second presidential debate, in which John Kerry used the word "plan" 24 times, I said on television that Kerry has a plan for everything except curing psoriasis. I should have known there is no parodying Kerry's pandering. It turned out days later that the Kerry campaign has a plan -- nay, a promise -- to cure paralysis. What is the plan? Vote for Kerry.

This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."



In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.

Where does one begin to deconstruct this outrage?

First, the inability of the human spinal cord to regenerate is one of the great mysteries of biology. The answer is not remotely around the corner. It could take a generation to unravel. To imply, as Edwards did, that it is imminent if only you elect the right politicians is scandalous.

Second, if the cure for spinal cord injury comes, we have no idea where it will come from. There are many lines of inquiry. Stem cell research is just one of many possibilities, and a very speculative one at that. For 30 years I have heard promises of miracle cures for paralysis (including my own, suffered as a medical student). The last fad, fetal tissue transplants, was thought to be a sure thing. Nothing came of it.

As a doctor by training, I've known better than to believe the hype -- and have tried in my own counseling of people with new spinal cord injuries to place the possibility of cure in abeyance. I advise instead to concentrate on making a life (and a very good life it can be) with the hand one is dealt. The greatest enemies of this advice have been the snake-oil salesmen promising a miracle around the corner. I never expected a candidate for vice president to be one of them.

Third, the implication that Christopher Reeve was prevented from getting out of his wheelchair by the Bush stem cell policies is a travesty.

George Bush is the first president to approve federal funding for stem cell research. There are 22 lines of stem cells now available, up from one just two years ago. As Leon Kass, head of the President's Council on Bioethics, has written, there are 3,500 shipments of stem cells waiting for anybody who wants them.

Edwards and Kerry constantly talk of a Bush "ban" on stem cell research. This is false. There is no ban. You want to study stem cells? You get them from the companies that have the cells and apply to the National Institutes of Health for the federal funding.

In his Aug. 7 radio address to the nation, Kerry referred not once but four times to the "ban" on stem cell research instituted by Bush. At the time, Reeve was alive, so not available for posthumous exploitation. But Ronald Reagan was available, having recently died of Alzheimer's.

So what does Kerry do? He begins his radio address with the disgraceful claim that the stem cell "ban" is standing in the way of an Alzheimer's cure.

This is an outright lie. The President's Council on Bioethics, on which I sit, had one of the world's foremost experts on Alzheimer's, Dennis Selkoe from Harvard, give us a lecture on the newest and most promising approaches to solving the Alzheimer's mystery. Selkoe reported remarkable progress in using biochemicals to clear the "plaque" deposits in the brain that lead to Alzheimer's. He ended his presentation without the phrase "stem cells" having passed his lips.

So much for the miracle cure. Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at NIH, has admitted publicly that stem cells as an Alzheimer's cure are a fiction, but that "people need a fairy tale." Kerry and Edwards certainly do. They are shamelessly exploiting this fairy tale, having no doubt been told by their pollsters that stem cells play well politically for them.

Politicians have long promised a chicken in every pot. It is part of the game. It is one thing to promise ethanol subsidies here, dairy price controls there. But to exploit the desperate hopes of desperate people with the promise of Christ-like cures is beyond the pale.

There is no apologizing for Edwards's remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com



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© 2004 The Washington Post Company

This article was taken from the Washington Post Online site..full credit given to them for this article...

bless you all,
PD
_________________
"We will not tire, We will not falter, We will not fail."
-President George W. Bush

www.timetotakeastand.blogspot.com

[FF1047]

Just for clarity ... Would you support Fetal Stem Cell research that did not use cells from an embryo ?

Fetal cells can be harvested from the afterbirth for research purposes (they work just as well as the Embryonic ones ...)
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JJC
USNA class of 1980

[SooZQ]

[noc]

Stem cells can also be harvested from the blood and bone marrow as well as other organs in the body. Much of the progress in stem cell research has come from human adult stem cells and not the embryonic ones.

[Steve Z]

I would be careful about calling them "fetal" stem cells, because the word "fetus" refers to any unborn baby beyond a few weeks of gestation, when taking cells might be fatal to the fetus. In fact, "amniocentesis" (checking for genetic anomalies by taking amniotic fluid) presents a minor risk of miscarriage, and should be avoided by expectant mothers planning to give birth, and not consider abortion.

If we are to argue for the use of stem cells from "afterbirth" (to which even the Catholic Church does not object), it is more accurate to refer to them as "placental stem cells" or "cord blood stem cells". The use of these cells does not present any moral dilemma, because both the placenta and umbilical cord are normally discarded after a live birth, and taking stem cells from them would not endanger either the mother or the newborn baby.
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The traitor will crater!

[GIaunt]

What I heard Kerry say in a speech, was that we should take all the frozen embryos that are "leftovers" from fertilization programs that are stored all over the country and use those for stem cell research.

There is no ban on embryonic stem cell research.... Kerry and his wife should set up a memorial fund for his friend Christopher Reeve with their own $$$.

NOT MY $$..... If I am to fund research, I'd rather it meet 2 criteria:
it not violate an ethical standard (I won't preach my beliefs here)
it be for something that has meaning to me

[RogerRabbit]

One would think the Queen of Ketchup could do a bit of funding with her (Republican) millions
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"Si vis pacem, para bellum"

[ProudDaughterofVet]