Text 3559, 99 rader
Skriven 2004-10-15 19:07:39 av Alan Hess
Ärende: Krauthammer pissed at Edwards
=====================================
and Kerry.  But he does get Edwards' quote right.
******

     
Marriott Hotels and Resorts
washingtonpost.com
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.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

+ 2004 The Washington Post Company

--- Msged/2 6.0.1
 * Origin: tncbbs.no-ip.com - Home of the POL_DISORDER echo. (1:261/1000)