[QUAD-L] FW: A washingtonpost.com article

[Jim Lubin]

 An Edwards Outrage
 
 By Charles Krauthammer
 
   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.
 
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
  

 Would you like to send this article to a friend? Go to
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/admin/emailfriend?contentId=A34
167-2004Oct14&sent=no&referrer=emailarticle
 
 

Visit washingtonpost.com today for the latest in:

News - http://www.washingtonpost.com/?referrer=emailarticle

Politics -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/?referrer=emailarticle

Sports -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/sports/?referrer=emailarticle

Entertainment -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artsandliving/entertainmentguide/?r
eferrer=emailarticle

Travel -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/travel/?referrer=emailarticle

Technology -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/technology/?referrer=emailarticle




Want the latest news in your inbox? Check out washingtonpost.com's
e-mail newsletters:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=admin/email&referrer=email
article



� 2004 The Washington Post Company