Posted on 10/28/2006 2:24:36 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
It is impossible not to be moved by television ads showing a shaking, obviously profoundly ill Michael J. Fox asking American voters to elect politicians sympathetic to stem-cell research. The actor has Parkinson's disease and he is convinced that he and others could be helped by such medical efforts.
He might be right.
It is possible that by killing unborn children and using their limbs, flesh, organs and stem cells to conduct research into neurological and other medical problems we could help sufferers and prolong life.
Mind you, there is enormous evidence that embryonic stem cells are not particularly helpful and that adult cells, easily obtainable from living people, give us far more hope for finding cures and gathering information. It is an ongoing debate.
What is not open to dispute, however, is that a child in the womb cannot give his or her permission for what amounts to organ donation -- and that to kill the weak so as to help the powerful has until now been considered one of the most obscene acts known to humanity.
We attempt to cloud our understanding by pretending that a child is not a "real person" before it is born. Thing is, at heart we know we're lying. It's why almost everybody has a visceral reaction to abortion. It revolts us. "I wouldn't have one myself," many say, "but I wouldn't stop someone else from having one."
Look, if an abortion is merely the removal of unwanted tissue, there should be no instinctive revulsion and there is no reason why anybody should not have one. If it is, though, the killing of a child, then nobody should have one. And it is, without doubt, the killing of a child.
There is no viable point for the beginning of life other than the moment of conception. We can pretend, we can be selfish, we can wish it wasn't the case.
Doesn't matter.
Birth is merely a relatively unimportant stage in the life of a tiny human being, begun nine months before the trip to the maternity ward.
Just as it was with Michael J. Fox, who was fortunate enough to survive the time of his mother's pregnancy and be allowed to live. Now he is in trouble and we should all care very much. He cares and became a champion for stem-cell research after he was diagnosed with Parkinson's.
Which is entirely understandable. But was stem-cell research wrong before this? Was it unimportant or irrelevant? The point I am making is that Fox's attitude towards the issue is shaped not by morality or science but by desperation and need.
Once again, entirely understandable. Yet wrong. He is no longer objective and thus no longer reliable. We listen to him not because he is an expert but because he is a victim. Emotion becomes more significant than truth.
The irony of this is that pro-lifers are routinely accused of being emotional and unreasonable, when in fact reason is at the centre of their cause.
Those who insist on the right to abort babies so as to use their stem cells are the ones who use the ailing and the ill to promote their policies.
There is no such opportunity for the unborn. They cannot speak for themselves, so we have to speak for them. I'm sure that someone as sensitive and vulnerable as Michael J. Fox would understand why.
Sorry but Fox is a fool.
I'm imagining that Senator (Dr.) Coburn would have something powerful to say abot this, were the Senate still in session. He is always a passionate advocate for the unborn.
Thank you for posting this article. It says what needs to be said in a sensitive manner. I only wish Rush had said it the same way ( and I love Rush). We need logic, not emotion, when dealing with this subject.
Apparently, his convictions about embryonic stem cell research, even human cloning, are different from my own. His opinion about that isn't the problem. The real problem is -- Only if Republicans are defeated, only if liberal Democrats are elected, can we have a chance to cure this. And that is absurd.
Spot on!
Don't be sorry; it's just the way it is.
The technical term Marxists invented for Fox is "useful idiot."
Why doesn't Fox try to get the Canadian government to fund this research? Why is it always the American taxpayer who's gotta play the chump?
Maybe they won't do it. Maybe the canadians don't want to pour money down the ebryonic stem cell rathole either.
Michael J. Fox may be right. If the Democrats can get the dead to rise every Election Day, curing Parkinson's Disease should be a snap!
As a dual citizen, why isn't Fox making the same approach to the Canadian government? Guys like Fox, who play their own unfortunate conditions to the public for political reasons make me sick! Even though I despise what he did, I would make him well again, if it were in my power to do so, just as almost everyone would for the ill and ailing in our society. But Fox is a special case. Fox is a millionaire and the head of a multi-million dollar foundation. He recieves the best care and medications that allow him to carry on a reasonably normal life. He does work, after all, on a weekly TV series. So far, we haven't seen any disproportionate stumbling and shaking in that venue, have we? That he would parade his exaggerated symptoms before the public in order to elect people who are eager to sell out our country is something to which we must give serious thought. As much as our individual sympathies lie with his recovery, we must reject him and reject his dishonest appeal.
Sorry, but growing a life and then killing it in the name of saving another life is not just immoral, it isin't sound math either.
I still say this :
run side by side 1) the Fox ad and 2) other footage of Fox recently where he's perfectly normal.
Then have Fox explain the discrepancy.
For what reason did he choose to appear shaking in this commercial, when is all his other apperances he appears normal?
Why did he appear "shaking" in a partisan ad for a Democratic candidate? Implying Jim Talent wants to criminalize a cure for Parkinson's? And then later tell Katie Couric he's "bipartisan"?
If Michael Fox not exploitative, deceptive and duplicitous here I'd like to know what is. He's a charlatan.
Rush was right from the beginning and should not have apologized. Michael Fox should be the one explaining himself, not Rush.
I only wish Rush would shut up about it, and ignore the "usual suspects".
Careful what you suggest! In MO we have been known to ELECT the dead!
"Non-stem-cell research has great promise, but it somehow hasn't captured political imaginations. Earlier this year, gene researchers announced a new therapy, using a virus to place a powerful protein into the brain to change its dopamine-production characteristics. The possible benefits for patients with neurological diseases are great.
This therapy could be in clinical trials in three to five years, long before any stem-cell application is identified. (http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/10-00/ Parkinsons-monkeys.shtml)" http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-myword27a06oct27,0,4801509.story?coll=orl-opinion-headlines
This is the very therapy that the Michael J. Fox foundation is providing 1.9 million dollars to support Phase II trials and it's right on the front page of the website both as an article and a press release. From Oct. 17, 2006:
Gene Therapy Trials Show Promise against Parkinson's
Two studies benefit patients without adverse effects, but more tests are needed to be sure
And the press release, October 10, 2006:
Foundation Awards $1.9 Million to Support Ceregene Phase II Gene Therapy Clinical Trial
Funding follows on promising early results of Phase I trial
Shame on Michael Fox indeed! He is not only manipulating his medication to promote a false "promise" for the sake of influencing gullible voters, he is knowingly selling a fraudulent product hoping for political advantage. He was "acting" all right but the role he was playing was that of a HYPOCRITE and a CHARLATAN. He needs to be exposed for doing this and soon!!
There was a thread titled, "Virus, Not Embryo, Can Reverse Parkinson's Disease" exactly 6 years ago, October 28, 2000, about this therapy with an article that was published from the October 27, 2000 issue of Science magazine. Since then they have been working on the Phase I trials which have been very promising. That was the first year that Fox voted in an American election--for Gore of course. Just before the 2000 election, this is what he had to say in an article in the NY Times thanks to a post by LadyDoc:
A Crucial Election for Medical Research By MICHAEL J. FOX
As a Parkinson's disease patient and a new American citizen, I look forward to Election Day as something momentous: It's not just the first presidential race in which I can vote (I was born in Canada). The outcome is likely to have a dramatic bearing on my prognosis — and that of millions of Americans whose lives have been touched by Parkinson's, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, spinal cord injury, Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's disease and other devastating illnesses. That's because one question that may be decided on Tuesday is whether stem cell research — which holds the best hope of a cure for such diseases — will be permitted to go forward.
Campaign aides to George W. Bush, who has not publicly addressed the issue, stated on several occasions that a Bush administration would overturn current National Institutes of Health guideines and ban federal funding for stem cell research. Why? Because the research, which uses human embryos discarded from fertility clinics, has become enmeshed in the politics of abortion. Mr. Bush favors a ban on stem cell research, one aide said, "because of his pro-life views."
Yet stem cell research has nothing to do with abortion. It is not the same as fetal tissue research, the federal funding of which was banned by Presidents Reagan and Bush (but has since been authorized by Congress). Stem cell work uses undifferentiated cells extracted from embryos just a few days old — embryos produced during in vitro fertilization, a process that creates many more fertilized eggs than are implanted in the wombs of women trying to become pregnant. Currently, more than 100,000 embryos are frozen in storage. Most of these microscopic clumps of cells are destined to be destroyed — ending any potential for life.
Their potential for saving lives, however, may be unlimited. Given the proper signal or environment, stem cells, transplanted into human tissue, can be induced to develop into brain, heart, skin, bone marrow cells — indeed, any specialized cells. The scientific research community believes that the transplanted stem cells may be able to regenerate dead or dying human tissue, reversing the progress of disease. According to Cure, a coalition of 28 groups representing patients with cancer, Parkinson's, paralysis and other maladies, "no research in recent history has offered as much hope" for cures.
Support for stem-cell research comes not just from pro-choice Democrats like Al Gore but also from Republicans who have concluded, in the words of former Senator Bob Dole, that supporting such research is "the pro-life position to take."
The list includes Republican senators like Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, John McCain of Arizona, Connie Mack of Florida and Pete Domenici of New Mexico. Even Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon, who the National Right to Life Committee says voted "the right way" on abortion every time last year, supports the research. (let me note: they supported research in the past, before it was known stem cells could be obtained from non fetal tissue)
His family has experience with the ravages of Parkinson's disease, and he has concluded, "Part of my pro-life ethic is to make life better for the living." This is the real compassionate conservatism. One hopes that between now and next Tuesday, Mr. Bush will explain to those of us with debilitating diseases — indeed, to all of us — why it is more pro-life to throw away stem cells than to put them to work saving lives.
Michael J. Fox, the actor, is active in organizations working to combat Parkinson's disease. Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
He's still playing the same tune even though he knows it's
off-key!
The part where he says "Claire McCaskill shares my hope for cures..." is what truly made Fox's ad shameful. It clearly implies that Senator Talent doesn't care about finding cures for these terrible diseases.
Add that to the fact that whoever wrote the ad also had him -- intentionally I'm sure -- use a broad brush in saying 'stem cell research' instead of 'embryonic stem cell research' and you have a very misleading, deceptive, and disingenous ad.
LOL, it was a one time fluke.
Fox sure as hell wasn't shaking all over the place in those ads he had out several years ago
I sympathize with the guy and anyone else afflicted with such a terrible disease. But it doesn't give him any more right to lie than you or I have. So unless he's been taken in by the transparent embryonic SC hoax, it boils down to his wanting Democrats to win and a willingness to bend the truth to that end. But why would he want that? Life will be worse for everyone if they do, except welfare queens.
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