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4 Salt,

Try to keep up would ya.

Little Johnny didn't even let Reeve's body get cold after passing away to try and make polital points from his passing.

This kind of disgusting and false diatribe may have worked on empathetic rubes in the Southern civil coutrooms--but it now exposes him to the Nation for the shameless shuck and jive artist that he is would make light of his grandmothers irregular bowel movements (even if it wasn't a problem or even true) if he thought it might help him in the poles or win a lawsuit. Edwards has no moral conscience or respect.
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He made these comments right after Reeve died.
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Edwards Stem Cell Vision:

'We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases...
When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.' Edwards made the unprecedented campaign promises during 30-minute speech at Newton High School gym in Newton, Iowa...

Ahhh Rory... I notice that the date of that speech is conspicuously absent.

He also said basically the same thing during the VP debates.

Are you trying to say that Edwards, knowing full well that Christopher Reeve had passed, (which didn't hit the airwaves till Sunday) said those things regardless?

It is you my friend who should endeavor to "keep up". :p

4 Salt,

He said it yesterday.

OK, my bad.

Here's just a morsel of "food for thought":

Perhaps Christopher Reeve being the most well known person with a spinal cord injury was the motivation behind Edwards statement. After all If he would have said:" People like Joe Schmo are going to get out of their wheelchairs and walk again" it probably wouldn't have had the same impact on high schoolers who, as you so often point out, only seem to relate to what they see on TV?

Or... perhaps he hadn't heard the news yet? Either way, I'll personally give him the benefit of the doubt... just as I would Dick Cheney if he had said it.

4 Salt,

The disgusting comment by Edwards was just made on the campaign trail right after Little Johnny acknowledged Reeve's passing.
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On Special Report with Brit Hume, Charles Krauthammer was asked about this. Charles Krauthammer is in a wheelchair. Charles Krauthammer is a paraplegic. He is outraged by Edwards' comments and this is what he said.

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, no one really knows, one of the great mysteries in medicine is why the spinal cord does not regenerate, and no one has any idea of the answers, no one is in any way sure that we're going to learn the answer from stem cell research. We might, but I've heard a lot of hype over the last 30 years about the keys to the kingdom here in this issue and all of that have proved false. For Edwards to make the claim he did is the worst demagoguery I've heard in Washington in a quarter century. To imply that Christopher Reeve was kept in the wheelchair because of the policies of the Bush administration on stem cells is ridiculous and insulting.


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This article was written by Charles Krauthammer who was in a car accident and suffered a spinal cord injury that has prevented him from walking for over 30 years.
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Why Lines Must Be Drawn

Stem cells present a complex moral issue.

Shame on Democrats for polarizing it


Monday, Aug. 16, 2004
In an election year, it is too much to expect serious and complicated moral issues to be treated with seriousness and complexity. Nonetheless, the way Democrats have managed to caricature and debase the debate over embryonic stem-cell research stands in a class by itself.

In his Aug. 7 radio address to the nation, John Kerry three times referred to "the ban" on stem-cell research instituted by President George W. Bush. What ban? Stem-cell research is legal in the U.S. and has been so since human embryonic stem cells were first isolated in 1998. There are dozens of groups studying them, including major stem-cell centers recently launched at Stanford and Harvard.

Perhaps Democrats mean a ban on federal funding for stem-cell research. But, in fact, there is no such ban. Through the Clinton years there was a ban. Not a single penny of federal money was allowed for any embryo research. In his first year in office, however, President Bush reviewed the issue and permitted the first federal funding of stem-cell research ever.

Bush did more than just free up money. In August 2001 he addressed the issue in one of the most morally serious speeches ever delivered by a U.S. President. Political speeches are generally constructed — I know; I used to write them — so that facts are stacked from the very beginning to lead you inexorably to the foregone conclusion. In contrast, Bush's nationally televised address presented both sides of the question with such fairness and respect that three-quarters of the way through the speech you found yourself without any idea where the President would come out.

The position he did adopt was one kind of middle ground — funding research using existing stem-cell lines but not funding research to create stem-cell lines because these must inevitably involve the destruction of human embryos.

I would have drawn the line differently. I would have permitted the conduct of all research using cells drawn from the discarded embryos of fertility clinics (unused and ultimately doomed) but not from embryos created purposely and wantonly for nothing but use by science.

Honorable people will draw the line in different places because this is not an issue of reason vs. ignorance, as the Democrats have portrayed it, but of recognizing two important competing human values: the thirst for knowledge and cures on the one hand and, on the other, the respect for even embryonic human life and a well-grounded respect for the proven human capacity to misuse newly acquired powers, in this case, the power to manipulate, reshape, dissect and redesign the developing human embryo.

However, having no doubt discovered through focus groups and polling that stem-cell research might be a useful reverse-wedge issue against Republicans, who have traditionally enjoyed an electoral advantage on "values," the Democrats showcased it with a prime-time convention speech by the well-known medical expert Ron Reagan. Message? On the one side are the forces of the good, on the verge of curing such terrible afflictions as Parkinson's, diabetes and spinal-cord injury. On the other are the forces of reaction and superstition who, slaves to a primitive religiosity, would condemn millions to suffer and die. Or as Reagan subtly put it, the choice is "between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology."

Compassion? There's nothing less compassionate than to construct a political constituency of sufferers (and their loved ones) by falsely and cruelly intimating that their disease is on the very cusp of cure if only the President would stop playing politics with the issue. Why, after all, was Reagan addressing the nation on a subject of which he knows nothing? Because his famous father died of Alzheimer's, and some (including, sadly, Nancy Reagan) have been led to believe that Alzheimer's is curable using stem cells. This is nonsense. Cynical nonsense. Or as Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem-cell researcher at the National Institutes of Health, admitted candidly to the Washington Post, a fiction: "People need a fairy tale." Yet Kerry began his radio address with the disgraceful claim that the stem-cell "ban" is standing in the way of an Alzheimer's cure.

When I was 22 and a first-year medical student, I suffered a spinal-cord injury. I have not walked in 32 years. I would be delighted to do so again. But not at any price. I think it is more important to bequeath to my son a world that retains a moral compass, a world that when unleashing the most powerful human discovery since Alamogordo — something as protean, elemental, powerful and potentially dangerous as the manipulation and re-formation of the human embryo — recognizes that lines must be drawn and fences erected

This is would be great area for the Johns to make a little investment.

:rolleyes: Amazing. You're so damned sensitive and compassionate. I gather you're going to write a lengthy essay on how disgusting the RNC was for the number of times it invoked the image of 9/11?

I mean, since you can't stand the thought of a candidate using someone's death for political gain, and all. :rolleyes:

And the only reason Bush is the first to fund stem cell research is because the science wasn't available until 1998. The Clinton administration was on the verge of issuing grants for research when he left office. Bush initially banned stem cell research funding, and then changed his mind late in 2001. (you know, like a flip-flop) You can find that at Religious Tolerance dot org.

You go GoHarley!!!

Goharley,

I've got a great new Avatar for you:



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"For Edwards to make the claim he did is the worst demagoguery I've heard in Washington in a quarter century. To imply that Christopher Reeve was kept in the wheelchair because of the policies of the Bush administration on stem cells is ridiculous and insulting."---Charles Krauthammer 10/11/04

(but what does he know--he's only a M.D. who's been a paraplegic for over thirty years who's studied spinal cord injuries extensively )

I pictured Eddie jumping up and down with pom poms cheering for GH.


Who is stopping the private sector if it is so viable? I thought health care for everyone was more important.

King - you keep your eyes and right wing hands off my pom poms!!

And how would you know this? Oh that's right..........you don't, but that never stopped the hot air from rushing out your ass before either.

Thanks for not addressing my earlier point about destroying or keeping frozen indefinitely embryos that might be used in research with life-saving potential. Your brilliant retort was even shorter than I'd anticipated.

TK is just like the tools that claimed the atom couldn't be split because.......gee.........it hadn't happened yet. Yeah, well no sh!t Sherlock. Results usually come AFTER research.

I suppose the government can only be counted on to fund research with moral questions when it's used to incinerate people, not save them huh? We'll research the hell out of nuclear fission so we can blow people up (no moral questions there right? ), but we get all tight-assed (well, you do) about using embryonic tissue because it "could" be life........but where's the outrage when the tissue is disposed of (usually burned), or kept frozen in limbo until it is destroyed?

Tell your diabetic buddy he should get a new friend. He'd be dead already if scientists took the whiny-assed "we won't have a cure tomorrow, so let's not even try" approach you seem to be advocating. At least now he probably takes gentically-human insulin, takes blood-pressure meds for kidney maintenance, and will have precision laser eye surgery available if retinopathy sets in. None of it came from people sitting on their ass sniveling about the current lack of a cure. You do what you can to stay healthy until there IS a cure. Could be tomorrow, next year, 10 years or never. But only a loser stops looking.

Oh, and your premise of not wanting your tax money going to research you find morally questionable reminds me of the granola/peacenik crowd and their view of weapons research. Two peas in a pod, you are.

Krauthammer credible? He makes guys like Stalin and Mussolini look more liberal than Ted Kennedy.

Speaking of pom poms, wasn't Bush a cheerleader in college? Is he trying to make up for that now with his faux machismo?

DanS,

You assume way to much O pompous one. I am not against stem cell research, never have been. I clearly state that it is unproven technology and that I disagree with making claims that it will cure any disease . It's pandering to get people to support it on emotion not facts. Was reading comprehension an elective at UW? Embryonic research? depends. It seems to me that the birth control pill has the same net effect on the embryo. So that if the pill is OK where is the issue with using the discarded embryo's for research? Some more time thinking on that issue will help me answer the question. Secondly given the answer is a go then what are the controls we can put place to make sure that we are not just farmining embryo's for science? So the moratorium has been good from my vantage point.

:D Now THAT'S funny! TK is calling me pompous! Hello pot.............

If nothing else, this BB provides some much needed humor.

You forgot Dan, we must pay our daily homage and kneel before the all mighty, all powerful, all knowing of everything in the Universe, THE KING. :rolleyes:

From one that is intellectually dishonest meaning he has capacity to think and the other a dullard I take that to be a compliment

Edwards' loathsome display of demagoguery:

I never expected a candidate for vice president to give paralysis sufferers false hope

By Charles Krauthammer


Editor's note: The author is confined to a wheel chair


http://www.jewishworldreview.com

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.

False hope? It's only false if it doesn't work, and since we don't know yet if it will work, calling it "false" hope is a stretch.

Not surpising to see Rory making that stretch right along with Krauthammer, though.

Sit in your chair and lose hope for any cure, Krauthammer............it's your "hopeless" life to lead.