Posted on 10/12/2004 11:11:40 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign has used the death of Christopher Reeve to highlight its differences with President Bush over embryonic stem-cell research, but the actor himself expressed doubt over the ability of the cells to treat chronic injuries such as the paralysis he suffered from a horse-rising accident nearly a decade ago.
Reeve, a leading advocate for finding a cure for spinal cord injuries, died Sunday night, shortly after Kerry mentioned his name in Friday night's debate to argue for federal funding of the controversial research, which opponents, such as President Bush, argue destroys human life.
In an interview earlier this year, however, Readers' Digest asked Reeve, "What's your position on embryonic stem-cell research?"
"I advocate it because I think scientists should be free to pursue every possible avenue," Reeve said. "It appears though, at the moment, that embryonic stem cells are effective in treating acute injuries and are not able to do much about chronic injuries."
Nevertheless, vice presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards made a startling campaign promise Monday during a speech at a high school in Newton, Iowa.
"We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases," Edwards said, referring to federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research. " ... When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."
But as a citizen questioner, Elizabeth Long, pointed out in Friday's town-hall style debate, it's the adult stem cells, requiring no destruction of human life, that actually have yielded remarkable results and show the most promise.
Long asked Kerry: "Thousands of people have already been cured or treated by the use of adult stem cells or umbilical-cord stem cells. However, no one has been cured by using embryonic stem cells. Wouldn't it be wise to use stem cells obtained without the destruction of an embryo?"
In his response, Kerry said scientists have told him "we have the option" of curing Parkinson's, diabetes and spinal-cord injuries using embryonic stem cells.
But Princeton University Professor Robert P. George insists no scientists – not even those most aggresively in favor of the research that destroys embryos – have ever told Kerry any such thing.
"What Kerry has done here is told the big lie about embryonic stem cells," George said in a column for National Review Online.
The claim is "outrageous," he said.
"No one knows when – or even whether or not – human embryonic stem cells will be therapeutically useful in treating any major disease or injury."
George said there are profound and perhaps insurmountable problems with the therapeutic use of the cells.
He emphasizes, despite what the Kerry campaign has said, there is no federal ban on embryonic stem-cell research. Yet the studies that have been funded with state and private money have not even yielded clinical trials.
At the same time, stem cells from adults or umbilical cords have yielded remarkable results.
"For months now, the Kerry campaign and its surrogates, such as Ron Reagan Jr., have cruelly led suffering people to believe that cures for their diseases are just around the corner," George said. "All we have to do is replace Bush with Kerry, open the federal funding spigot, and presto! The blind see and the lame walk!"
The Kerry campaign's "hyping of embryo-destructive research for political gain is the cruelest and most shameful episode in the story of the 2004 election," George said.
In the Reader's Digest interview, Reeve was asked, "How have political decisions slowed stem cell research?"
"The religious right has had quite an influence on the debate," he said. "I don't think that's appropriate. When we're setting public policy, no one segment of society deserves the only seat at the table. That's the way it's set in the Constitution. So debate all we want, hear from everybody. And then allow our representatives to weigh the factors and make laws that are going to be ethically sound, moral, responsible, but not the result of undue pressure from any particular entity."
Later in the interview, Reeve was asked about going nearly 50 years in his life "without religion" then recently joining the Unitarian Church, a movement that shuns orthodox Christian doctrine.
"It gives me a moral compass," he said. "I often refer to Abe Lincoln, who said, "When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion."
"I think we all have a little voice inside us that will guide us," Reeve continued. "It may be God, I don't know. But I think that if we shut out all the noise and clutter from our lives and listen to that voice, it will tell us the right thing to do. The Unitarian believes that God is good, and believes that God believes that man is good. Inherently. The Unitarian God is not a God of vengeance. And that is something I can appreciate."
But Princeton University Professor Robert P. George insists no scientists – not even those most aggresively in favor of the research that destroys embryos – have ever told Kerry any such thing.
"What Kerry has done here is told the big lie about embryonic stem cells," George said in a column for National Review Online.
The claim is "outrageous," he said.
"No one knows when – or even whether or not – human embryonic stem cells will be therapeutically useful in treating any major disease or injury."
No line of stem cells will cure Kerry of lying.
Maybe Ms. Cleo forwarded the Call?
However, George W. Bush has a chance to let tens of millions of Americans know about the substance of this story in the third and final debate.
Will Bush be brave enough to accuse Kerry of using typical Democratic Party scare tactics to drum up votes? Will Bush point out that millionaires like Kerry and his wife are still allowed by U.S. law to donate money for research studies as long as federal taxpayer resources aren't used. (In other words, if Kerry has really been so touched by Christopher Reeve and so convinced that embryonic stem cells hold the cure, has he donated any of his money for private research?)
Will Bush step up to the plate and accuse John Edwards of spreading false hope in an attempt to squeeze votes out of uninformed people?
It's time to go on offense, but I'm afraid Bush will once again sound like he's on defense.
My wife heard on the news that Reeves went into a coma on sunday. I would like to find out when he actually did go into a coma.
I heard there was some article somewhere saying he went into the coma on Thursday.
Origins of the Current Policy
In accordance with the Dickey Amendment, passed each year since 1995, research involving the destruction of human embryos cannot be funded with taxpayer dollars. This is not Bush's policy; it is the law of the land, passed annually by Congress and signed by both Presidents Clinton and Bush. This law does not ban embryo research, and it does not fund embryo research. It is a policy of public silence.
In 2000, the Clinton administration discovered a loophole that would allow the NIH to provide some federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research without asking Congress to overturn the Dickey amendment. By law, the government could not fund research in which embryos were destroyed. But if the destruction itself were funded privately, the government could offer funds for subsequent research on embryonic-stem-cell lines derived from the destroyed embryos. In other words: A researcher could destroy endless numbers of embryos in his private lab, and then use the fruits of such destruction to get public funding. This would not violate the letter of the law, but surely the spirit.
When he took office in 2001, President Bush put implementation of the Clinton guidelines on hold. He wanted a way to support potentially promising research, but he also did not believe the federal government should create an ongoing incentive for the destruction of human embryos. On August 9, 2001, President Bush announced his new guidelines: federal funding for research using stem-cell lines that existed before the announcement, but not for those created after. In this way, federal money would not act as an incentive for destroying human embryos in the future, but stem cells derived from embryos already destroyed in the past could be used with federal money to explore the basic science.
This was the fundamental bargain of the policy: no limits on embryonic-stem-cell research in the private sector (unlike much of the world, which regulates this practice), but no public subsidies to encourage a limitless industry of embryo destruction.
At a May 11 hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee on Aging, for example, Johns Hopkins Alzheimer's Disease expert Peter Rabins and Washington University Alzheimer's researcher John Morris both told the senators that they do not expect embryonic stem cells to play a role in Alzheimer's treatment. Experts on other diseases speak with similar restraint. In the end, the research may bear therapeutic fruit and it may not — we cannot know in advance. It may cure some diseases and not others. But by seeming to promise medical salvation without limits, stem-cell advocates risk blurring the difficult ethical questions that surround this new science.
Inflated Promise, Distorted Facts
Though embryonic stem cell research advocates euphemistically refer to the current state of research as an “early stage”, the unfortunate reality is the goal of embryonic stem cell therapies is, at this point, more accurately described as a pipe dream. No researcher is anywhere close to significant progress in developing practical embryonic stem cell therapies.
The only thing certain is that the cost of that research will be high. If embryonic stem cell research had real and imminent possibilities, private investors would be pouring capital into research hoping for real and imminent profits. Instead, venture capital firms are contributing to political efforts to get taxpayers to fund research. What the venture capitalists seem to be hoping for is that taxpayer funding of stem cell research will increase the value of their stakes in biotech companies. The venture capitalists can then cash out at a hefty profit, leaving taxpayers holding the bag of fruitless research.
Ron Reagan Wrong on Stem Cells
“Embryonic stem cells are not going to be the source of a cure for Alzheimer's”, Dobson told the capacity crowd. ”Are you aware that not one human being anywhere in the world is being treated with embryonic stem cells? There is not a single clinical trial going on anywhere in the world, because (embryonic) stem cells in laboratory animals ... create tumors. Nobody will use them.”
By comparison, adult stem cells have shown great promise in the treatment of diseases such as diabetes, Dobson explained. And they do not require the destruction of embryonic human life, since they can be harvested from such sources as umbilical cord blood and bone marrow.
I would like to see Bush quote Reeve on this one. It would definitely create a firestorm and put Kerry on the defensive.
Where did you see this? Do you have a source?
We need to verify this. If true, it means that the Kerry campaign is caught in another whopper (surprise, surprise). If not, it still doesn't let Kerry off the hook, because we have no way of knowing if he is telling the truth or not.
I heard it on Mark Belling & Belling is usually reliable. He said the fammily made a statement & they would have no reason to lie about it.
All I can find are articles saying he went into a coma on Saturday.
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:Gg5iBdOnaQUJ:www.whotv13.com/Global/category.asp%3FC%3D13041%26nav%3DLotJ+reeve+Thursday+coma&hl=en
Actor, Writer and Director Christopher Reeve is dead after going into cardiac arrest last Thursday.
According to sources close to the actor, Reeve died Sunday. The actor fell into a coma on Thursday after going into cardiac arrest at his New York home.
You mean like Dr. Mengele did?
Thanks for the link. Maybe the news readers got confused over when he went into a coma and when he actually died.
This is a popular misconception perpetuated by a typo in the press. Reeves was not, "in a Coma," but was actually, "in Cambodia," when he called Kerry.
Adult Cells Do It BetterAdult stem cells have already been used for more than 20 years as bone-marrow transplants to reconstitute the immune systems of patients with cancer and to treat blood cancers such as leukemia. Using the body's own stem cells means the immune system's rejection reflex will not be aroused. Adult cells are far closer to commercial application, which is crucial to venture investors. Given the long lead times necessary to gain approval for new medical technologies, if a company can't get significant results in four to six years, it's generally beyond the scope of a venture capitalist's interest. In addition to speed, venture capitalists look for a "technology platform" broad enough to support multiple indications for the same product. While the embryonic cells are rumored to have broad potential, so far only adult stem cells have demonstrated wide uses.
by Scott Gottlieb
The American Spectator
June 2001Stem Cells Used in Heart RepairDoctors said Wednesday they are attempting an experimental procedure to heal a teenage patient's heart by infusing it with the boy's own blood stem cells. It could take months to know whether it works, but doctors say they are already seeing encouraging results... Animal studies have shown that stem cells - the body's building blocks for all types of tissue - can be injected to grow new muscle and blood vessels, and researchers have expressed hope that the research could eventually help repair human hearts and other tissue... Stem cell researchers not involved in the experiment said they knew of no similar research in humans. There already is some evidence, however, that stimulating stem cell production alone can cause tissue regeneration, without having to inject cells into a particular area.
by David Goodman
3/06/03
AP
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