October 15, 2004 - The Lazarus Effect
Hello Thinkers!
This is going to be a short one - for me anyway. We are just over a month away from our new arrival and one entire side of my house has been ripped down to the studs (and beyond) repairing some long unnoticed water damage. Needless to say, the nursery does not look like a nursery just yet - more like Home Depot. Between these and other tasks in my sights, writing commentaries has had to take a back seat.
However, recent statements from the campaign trail have truely left me flabbergasted. Specifically the prose from John Edwards. He has been called many things from "The Breck Girl" to "Ambulance Chaser" to "Breast Implants for the Kerry Ticket" to the lowest of the low: "Trial Lawyer". But it is now time to add a new moniker: "Snake Oil Salesman". This week, in Iowa, Edwards made claims alluding that if elected, the Kerry/Edwards team will cure paralysis. Now Al Gore inventing the internet was pretty good, but this takes the cake.
Maybe these outrageous claims mean that Elizabeth Edwards needs to put the doughnut down and get ready to sing - after she's through telling all of us how the Cheneys are ashamed of their lesbian daughter (and I thought Teresa was the one without any class).
Why do I say this? Because the polls you and I see from the alphabet soup news networks are about as useful as a pre-debate manicure. The polls that really indicate where things are going will never be seen by the general public. They are run by both campaigns, cost huge bucks, and are guarded like crown jewels.
Back to Senator Sally from North Carolina. If his internal data is showing a Bush lead, then he's pulling out all the stops, which apparently include promising a cure for paralysis. If Bush or Cheney ever did this, it could cost them the election. But since a guy whose heart is 'in the right place' said it, well that's OK - the media will generally give him a pass (remember Deny, Deflect, and De-emphasize?)
http://home.comcast.net/~fish2xs/todayscommentary/2004-august-16.html
I have always tried to keep my rantings to The Thinkers original, and include only snippets from other sources as supporting evidence or cannon fodder. However, Charles Krauthammer is one of the smartest political TV talking heads I have ever seen, and he's paralyzed. If you have never read his work or seen him on TV, I humbly suggest you check him out. Since I cannot say this any better than he, this time I break my own rule and include his most recent article below.
Hey who knows? Maybe if Kerry/Edwards do win the election, the rotted pine studs and particle board sheathing in my house will magically self-repair and my writers block will be cured by their liberal necromancy.
Anything to Get Elected
Charles Krauthammer
October 15, 2004
WASHINGTON -- 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.
I'm not making this up. I couldn't. 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 raising for personal gain 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 the newly spinal-cord injured 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 enemy of this advice has 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.
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 Dr. 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, John Kerry referred not once but four times to the ``ban'' on stem cell research instituted by Bush. At the time, Christopher 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, Dr. 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 biochemically clearing the ``plaque'' deposits in the brain that lead to Alzheimer's. He ended his presentation without the phrase ``stem cells'' having crossed 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' remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected.
This is going to be a short one - for me anyway. We are just over a month away from our new arrival and one entire side of my house has been ripped down to the studs (and beyond) repairing some long unnoticed water damage. Needless to say, the nursery does not look like a nursery just yet - more like Home Depot. Between these and other tasks in my sights, writing commentaries has had to take a back seat.
However, recent statements from the campaign trail have truely left me flabbergasted. Specifically the prose from John Edwards. He has been called many things from "The Breck Girl" to "Ambulance Chaser" to "Breast Implants for the Kerry Ticket" to the lowest of the low: "Trial Lawyer". But it is now time to add a new moniker: "Snake Oil Salesman". This week, in Iowa, Edwards made claims alluding that if elected, the Kerry/Edwards team will cure paralysis. Now Al Gore inventing the internet was pretty good, but this takes the cake.
Maybe these outrageous claims mean that Elizabeth Edwards needs to put the doughnut down and get ready to sing - after she's through telling all of us how the Cheneys are ashamed of their lesbian daughter (and I thought Teresa was the one without any class).
Why do I say this? Because the polls you and I see from the alphabet soup news networks are about as useful as a pre-debate manicure. The polls that really indicate where things are going will never be seen by the general public. They are run by both campaigns, cost huge bucks, and are guarded like crown jewels.
Back to Senator Sally from North Carolina. If his internal data is showing a Bush lead, then he's pulling out all the stops, which apparently include promising a cure for paralysis. If Bush or Cheney ever did this, it could cost them the election. But since a guy whose heart is 'in the right place' said it, well that's OK - the media will generally give him a pass (remember Deny, Deflect, and De-emphasize?)
http://home.comcast.net/~fish2xs/todayscommentary/2004-august-16.html
I have always tried to keep my rantings to The Thinkers original, and include only snippets from other sources as supporting evidence or cannon fodder. However, Charles Krauthammer is one of the smartest political TV talking heads I have ever seen, and he's paralyzed. If you have never read his work or seen him on TV, I humbly suggest you check him out. Since I cannot say this any better than he, this time I break my own rule and include his most recent article below.
Hey who knows? Maybe if Kerry/Edwards do win the election, the rotted pine studs and particle board sheathing in my house will magically self-repair and my writers block will be cured by their liberal necromancy.
Anything to Get Elected
Charles Krauthammer
October 15, 2004
WASHINGTON -- 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.
I'm not making this up. I couldn't. 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 raising for personal gain 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 the newly spinal-cord injured 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 enemy of this advice has 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.
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 Dr. 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, John Kerry referred not once but four times to the ``ban'' on stem cell research instituted by Bush. At the time, Christopher 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, Dr. 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 biochemically clearing the ``plaque'' deposits in the brain that lead to Alzheimer's. He ended his presentation without the phrase ``stem cells'' having crossed 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' remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected.
posted by tuffbeingright at 8:13 AM
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