Flight simulator - An Edwards Outrage...

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An Edwards Outrage...

Mitch_A

2004-10-21, 12:46 am

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.

Bee

2004-10-22, 5:46 pm

"Mitch_A" <naman-nospam@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:YtEdd.16702$nj.11029@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...

quote:

> 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

Check your IL2 manual. Ch 2 has a good writeup on how to land Bf109.