Two points worth mentioning:
* According to the NIH, Parkinson’s could be one of the first diseases treated by the product of stem cell research. That makes Michael J. Fox incontrovertibly right to let America witness his agonizing physical decline, and it makes Rush Limbaugh even more of an addled gasbag.
* [via Kos] Focus groups demonstrate that on a political level the ad was a home run with men on base. Please, Rush, say something stupid tomorrow. Watching this ad pushes Democrats, Republicans and Independents ten percentage points in the Democrats’ favor.
Overall this has to be one of the most inspired bits of political jujitsu in history. If he loses Jim Talent can spend long hours pondering how he got his ass kicked by a guy who can barely walk.
matt
My initial thought after I read that was wondering which constituancy “men on base” was referring to. Holy fracking duh.
Pooh
Fixed?
Zifnab
Times like this make the Democratic strategy of “sit back and let the ‘Pubs dig their own grave” not look as bad as it did four years ago.
If Clair McCaskill doesn’t win this election, it won’t be Micheal J.’s fault.
Gary Ruppert
The fact is that Democrats are known to trade crack for votes in the inner cities, which is why we are reluctantly forced to reduce the number of voting machines in black districts year after year. It’s no surprise that they tailored this ad to “men on base”, otherwise known as “baseheads”, i.e. persons addicted to crack, or “toot”, or “marijuana”. No person with a mind untainted by drugs would believe Fox’s preposterous swaying and stammering.
cleek
Talent can spend long hours pondering how he got his ass kicked by a guy who can barely walk.
let’s hope. but there’s another Missouri race that will forver stand as the greatest political showing of all time: Ashcroft v Carnahan
capelza
Gary! Did you get finally banned from Sadly No!? Or are you a fake Gary..or was the real Gary a fake, too? And it was Sadly No! wasn’t it?
What will they do without their pet wingnut?
Aside from that…in my secret heart of hearts, the little Capelza is kneeling by her bed, in her flannel jammies, saying a little prayer…”Please God, make this the really bad thing that finally brings down Rush Limbaugh…and bless mommy and daddy and my cat, Koo…Amen.”
cd6
Hahah
Balloon Juice and Sadly, No are having a wingnut exchange program or something
Maybe Darrell was traded to S,N! for Gary and a first round draft pick
sockpuppet in training
I admit that I understand NONE of the science behind this, and if the NIH say it is so, I will have to accept it, But does it strike anyone as strange that they are promising help with one of the most debilitating diseases known to man as a first step? I always thought the promises of curing paralysis, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s as a first step seemed a little far fetched. If stem cells are so valuable for their regenerative properties, wouldn’t arthritis or a mild youth serum be more realistic?
I ask this as someone who watched a good friend lose his dad at a very young age from Parkinson’s. Nasty stuff.
Krista
Now, now Capelza — you know that God only listens to Republicans.
stickler
Har, de har, har.
You were expecting that the NIH would tout the probability of curing psoriasis?
sockpuppet in training
Ah, the serious answer. Thanks.
harrison
I suppose there would have to be a “first disease treated” by embryonic stem cells eventually.
Pooh
Gary “thefactis” Ruppert has joined us!
BlogReeder
Has anyone mentioned that one of the differences between embryonic stems cell treatment and adult stem cell treatment is the need for anti-rejection drugs? Taking stem cells from an embryo is like any other organ donation.
Tsulagi
Shit, you leave the NIH directorship open for two years at the start of your administration searching for the just the right Brownie to please the theocons and yet they got this kind of crap up on their site? Damn, where are those 24 year-old message keeper backups like at NASA? Slackers.
Chris
One of the things that amazes me about the discussion of embryonic stem cell research is the inability to find any common ground whatsoever, as well as the inability to agree on certain basic facts.
The anti-ESCR position is fairly simple.
It begins by recognizing that embryos are human organisms. Now, if there is going to be any rational and civil debate on ESCR, this has to be acknowledged from the get-go. This is neither philosophy nor religion: it’s a fact of embryology.
The anti-ESCR position goes on to assert that *every* human organism possesses inherent dignity, and hence cannot be killed and its cells harvested for ESCR. NB: the key term is “organism”: we’re not talking about oocytes or any other simply human cell (which, in some sense at least, has human life); we’re talking about a human *organism*, which — again, according to science — an embryo is.
The only coherent way, then, to argue in favor of ESCR is to posit that not some human organisms do not possess inherent dignity. This argument, however, presents a new difficulty, in that that ESCR proponent must now develop a criterion by which to determine which human organisms possess human dignity and which do not. And presumably (Peter Singer et al. excepted), most ESCR proponents are going to try to tailor this criterion in a manner that does not exclude other classes from that which possess inherent dignity. But doing so in a non-arbitrary fashion is difficult as well.
What I find appealing about the anti-ESCR position is that it simply identifies dignity with being a human organism. It doesn’t tread down that well-worn path which seeks to grant dignity to some but not others; rather, it is all-inclusive: if you are a human organism, you possess dignity, not because I grant it to you, but simply because you are a human being.
My $.04.
Chuck Butcher
There is alway something attractive in a absolute answer, and it’s usually wrong. The Christian God – Jesus – had some things to say about conflict and none of them involved bombing your neighbor. Very few of the “absolutist” Christians seem to heel closely to those statements, they parse them. And so, while attractive, these kinds of statements are no more than smoke and mirrors for most who make them. They pick and choose the pieces of a religion that they will “adhere” to. There are those few who are consistent and their statements must be accorded respect, the rest are pretty easy to blow off as sophistry.
Pb
And therein lies the problem–the claim that embryos are equivalent to human beings at any or every other development stage–a claim which I and many others find to be simply laughable.
Their bizarre interpretations would also raise all sorts of other problems, such as with fertility clinics and the hundreds of thousands of embryos they create, or with taxation and claiming dependents–you name it. But their arguments are really just faith-based, and grounded in ignorance, not science, like most of their positions. On the other side:
I find all of that to be entirely reasonable and rational, which is probably why the pro-life crowd doesn’t want anyone talking about it in the first place.
Bruce Moomaw
Chris, a brain-dead human being is a “human organism”, and he is most certainly alive. But no one with any sanity objects to turning off his life support machines and thus killing him, because everyone recognizes that he has no consciousness and is therefore not — by any conceivable stretch — a person. In fact, he is far less of a person than a conscious animal is. And the same thing is true of an embryo — or an early-stage fetus — which has not yet developed any functioning brain cells, or has not yet started growing the interconnections between them in its cerebral cortex (which doesn’t even begin to happen until the 5th month). Therefore it is not only wrong, but downright ridiculous, to claim that there is ANY risk that we are killing a human person when we kill an embryo, or a first-trimester fetus. Not a one-in-a-million risk, or a one-in-a-billion risk. NO risk. And this is not fancy logic-chopping to try to justify abortions; it is plain, simple, common-sense physical fact.
Anti-abortionists and opponents of stem-cell research sometimes argue that, by killing embryos or first-trimester fetuses, we are keeping “potential” human persons from coming into existence. But by that same reasoning, any woman who doesn’t stay constantly pregnant is immoral — just think how many potential people SHE’S keeping from coming into existence!
Steve
Yeah, but doesn’t it bug you a little bit, believing that every single day there’s a massive embryo Holocaust as the fertility clinics take out the trash? If you could somehow know that you had successfully fertilized your wife’s egg, but the egg had failed to implant in the uterine wall (which happens about half the time), would you really mourn the loss of that embryo the way you’d mourn a baby, or even a miscarriage?
Really, this “you have to draw the line somewhere!” argument might have scored points in college debate class, but don’t kid yourself into thinking that it actually proves anything. You’re drawing a line too, you know – the fact that we have a word like “organism” to neatly describe where your line is drawn doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a line. Somewhere out there, someone is disgusted that you won’t stick up for the inherent dignity of every sperm cell.
For my part, I wouldn’t presume to know exactly where the line is drawn, but I’m pretty confident that you and I are way the fuck on one side of the line, and embryos in a Petri dish are way the fuck on the other side of the line. If you want to believe that embryos should be treated as if they’re actually little persons, then be my guest, it’s a free country. But the reason you take that position should be because you truly believe it, not because “it’s impossible to draw the line otherwise,” which is just a rhetorical jibe.
Ted
Seriously, this guy is either getting paid for this, or has no life. I don’t think I’d be proud of either..
scarshapedstar
Well, gang, it’s time for Chris to answer everyone’s favorite question.
For whatever reason, you suddenly find yourself in a burning fertility clinic. One one side of the room is a crying toddler. On the other side is a petri dish with one hundred zygotes (or, as you call them, “human organisms”). You only have time to grab one of them and escape. Which do you choose, and why?
Richard 23
Hahaha, Gary! You are teh funny guy! Now if only we could get annieangel to comment here. She’s even funnier than scs. Can you put in a good word for us here?
Reefer madness, anyone? Let’s snort some crack and roll some toot!
Tony J
Wait a minute, hold the F*#@*#g phone.
You mean that the above isn’t a spoof? As in, he really means that?
I need to lie down. That’s just too off the wall for me right now…….
Bombadil
Tony, I went through the whole thread looking for the acknowledgement that Gary was a spoof. When I first read the comment, I chuckled at it, thinking that we had a new comedian in the fold. Now I’m a bit creeped out.
Richard 23
Gary Ruperto is a well known Sadly No commentator. Spoof or not, you gotta admit he is pretty funny. Si?
The Other Steve
Da!
Rusty Shackleford
Here’s Michael J. Fox’s interview with Katie Couric from CBS News.
The key issue (the cells will be discarded anyway – either we throw the cells in the trash, or we use the cells for research) is addressed just after the 11:00 min mark.
Watch the whole interview.
Thanks.
lard lad
What about the cold-blooded murder of potential infants that occurs in every nook of the globe at every hour… when misguided men succumb to the Satan-fuelled desire to m*sturb*te? Think, just think on those trillions upon trillions of innocent souls (I call them “mucilage babies”) slaughtered daily by the foul self-pollution of the morally weak. Minutes ago they were cavorting happily, safe and secure in the warm haven of your body. Now they are faced with a tragic and brutal end on the cold bathroom tile… or entombed – unloved and unbaptized – in a wadded Kleenex.
As a wee lad, my mother always told me that touching myself “down there” made Jesus cry. Now I understand.
Zifnab
Listen, I would be much more sympathetic to the cries of horror and indignation at stem cell research if I didn’t taste quite so much hypocrasy. After Terri Shavio, a woman in a ten year coma, is taken off life-support, Congress moves heaven and earth to keep her alive.
But in my very own state of Texas,
(I’m sure the fact that the child was black had nothing to due with a lack of Republican support. If Shavio was poor and black, they’d totally have been right there with her, all the same.)
The truth is that infant children in this country aren’t garanteed one iota more of health benefits than the pleading mother can beg out of the emergency room. While a mother isn’t allowed to abort her child, in the minds of the high-handed religious right, she’s more than free to let the child suffer and perish post-partem. Where is universal child care on the Republican platform? Where is healthcare for expectant mothers? Last I checked, these feel at the feet of the tax-and-spend Democrats to impliment.
Forget ESCR for a second. Just look at abortions in general. How can you, in good conscience, demand a child be brought into the world without interuption, then let him develop asthma or diabetes or pnemonia and leave it purely to the child’s family financies to see he doesn’t die. How barbaric. How cruel. How perfectly Republican.
Bombadil
Sing with me, now…
VidaLoca
I think it’s called “junior year abroad”.
jcricket
Shorter Chris:
Congratulations Chris, you’ve failed your high school logic class and I’m kicking you out of debate club. For one you’ve committed a couple of basic logical fallacies, including what’s known as “false dilemma“. I’m sure there are others, why don’t you go to this site and find out?
Push your logic even a teensy bit further and the other posters and the Monty Python song isn’t far fetched. Masturbating is destroying 1/2 of a human organism and millions of potential human lives. Using condoms is a cruel joke on those 1/2 human organisms. Taking the birth control pill can keep fertilized eggs that would otherwise implant and grow into babies, making them even more of a human organism (they’re in a womb), so it should be outlawed too, right?
Anyone who seriously thinks that there’s no room for a logical, rational support of the other sides position is fooling themselves. Even on this issue.
Despite the fact that I am strongly pro ESC research I can can see a possible logic within the arguments of some ESC opponents. But only for those that also oppose IVF, because they are also as irate about the ongoing embryo holocaust occurring every year within IVF clinics. It’s the same destruction, and it’s been going on without complaint for the most part.
So, while there is a group of supporters who can claim logical opposition to ESC research, I doubt Chris is in it. The only people who are in it must also oppose IVF, contraception and probably masturbation.
The poll done around the Michael J Fox ad shows that the public largely supports ESC research (something like 70-75%) and doesn’t oppose federal funding when it understands that federal funding is the only source for this type of work. When you see the potential people who could benefit from ESC research up close, it appears that support goes even higher (83% after the MJF ad). It would appear that most people are quite comfortable with this issue and don’t buy the line of reasoning that makes 5-cell clumps in a vat the equivalent of living human beings.
demimondian
A human fetus — much less a human embryo — is, in fact, not an organism. Wiki has a nice suymmary of the definition:
The key word is “stable” — neither an embryo, or a human fetus before a certain stage of development, is capable of functioning as a stable whole. The “mother + zygote” pair is an organism, but the zygote itself is emphatically not.
Your core hypothesis is, therefore, not true. That doesn’t invalidate your conclusion, but it does rubbish your argument.
Punchy
Women ought to be burying their tampons, with little headstones for each. After all, who knows if there’s an embryo lodged in the fabric? Don’t all human embryos/zygotes deserve a proper burial?
Cyrus
There’s also the possibility that the original Gary Ruppert was for real but has since left for whatever reason and been replaced by a spoof (though he must have been pretty wacko in the first place, because there’s little or no difference in style), or even that whatever happened to SN!’s GR, this guy is a spoof. I miss Com Con and the other brief aliases from the halcyon days when DougJ still managed to fool gullible newcomers like me.
Punchy
Oh boy, here we go. By every biological definition, a embryo/zygote/fetus prior to the gestation period of 6 months (when it could theoretically live on it’s own) is a parasite. Yes, it robs the host of nutrients, it robs the host of oxygen, and it produces toxic waste withing the host. Most importantly, it cannot survive on it’s own–it’s wholly dependant on a host to live. By every biological aspect, it’s a parasite.
Chew on that.
Rusty Shackleford
Kinda like Alien?
JoeTx
So the republicans think the democrats are exploiting MJF for political gain..
MJF stumped for Arlen Spector in 2004, opps!
This shows that MJF is exploiting HIS illness for the benefit of OTHERS with similar illnesses. What an evil bastert!
If I was MJF, I would be exploiting the hell out out of my condition, if there was a glimmer of hope for a cure!!
I have always admired MJF, in fact, I’d consider myself a Micheal J Fox republican. Growing up during that time, he was the one I identified with most and explains why more than anything I became a R in the first place…
Lee
I’ve always asked those who are anti-abortion what is more important, reducing abortions or eliminating them. Then I ask how they propose eliminating all abortions, they always ask “By making it illegal”. My response “Kinda like how well the drug war works, right?”. I then go on to point out that it would make MORE sense to try to reduce the number of abortions, the way to do that would be to back Universal Healthcare, etc. It is usually at that point they sit in stunned silence.
demimondian
Although I’ve used the phrase as rhetorical flair (who, me? Not me!?!), technically, a developing zygote is not a parasite — it is a zygote. They’re special, representing a single generation’s investment in its genes. That in no way undermines the claim that a zygote is not an independent organism — that it might eventually be one has nothing to do with its current status.
craigie
Does anyone have a link to a downloadable version of the ad? I don’t mean the YouTube flash experience, I mean a QT or mpeg version I can put on my own computer.
Anyone? Thanks.
orogeny
I’ve repeatedly seen right-wingers say that Fox has admitted that he stops taking his medication to make his symptoms more noticeable when he testifies before Congress. I’ve yet to see a link to Fox saying this and can’t find anything like it via Google.
Is anyone aware of such a link?
capelza
orogeny…they are misusing the word “admitted”…when he appeared before Congress he told them then and there that he was off his meds…it wasn’t some secret revealed or admitted to a few years later.
It is telling that they are getting the talking points because I have seen this over all the webola…always leaving out that salient bit…he was pointedly upfront about it AT the hearing so the Congresscritters would know what PD was about.
orogeny
Thanks, Capelza.
A lot of the post I’ve seen have said that he supposedly admitted it “in his book”. They make it sound as though it is some sleazy tactic he’s using to get sympathy.
It’s funny, during the Reagan and Bush 41 years I had lots of Republican friends (living in Alabama, there’s not a lot of options). We could discuss politics over a beer and have a pretty good time at it. At this point, I’ve either dropped or have been dropped by, all my “conservative” friends. Torture, habeas corpus, secret prisons, stem cells…the things we would be discussing are not things that I can have a friendly disagreement about. I find myself at a point where I just can’t associate with them any more.
jcricket
It’s in MJF’s autobiography.
Let’s be clear about what happened when MJF testified and why he was off the meds then. Early in the disease the medication works well and has almost no side-effects, so it can “fool” people into thinking that Parkinson’s is not that bad. Just take some meds and you’ll be fine. MJF just timed it (you cycle the meds, so this wasn’t really dishonest) so he was off his meds when testifying to Congress. He also let Congress know he did that, as he wasn’t trying to hide anything. So they saw the early symptoms of the disease itself, tremors/stiffness. I fail to see what’s dishonest about displaying the true symptoms of your disease, unless the medication is a cure or works to permanently suppress your disease without side effects.
Let’s also clear about the medication, eventually, the meds have side effects, so being on the meds = wild flailing, which only diminishes as the meds stop working over time. If you’re off your meds you have minor shaking at first with eventual complete stiffness (a la Muhammad Ali).
So whether he’s on or off meds, he’s suffering from one symptom or another. Stiffness, tremors, flailing, speech problems, etc. How is it exploitive or dishonest or bad to show either condition, both of which are party of the daily lives of Parkinson’s sufferers? This is the situation MJF and others are in. They either take the meds and flail all over the place, or don’t take them and they can’t move.
So, while wingers are correct that MJF stopped taking medication to appear before Congress, it was not a dishonest thing to do. And now that his medication is having side effects, it’s not dishonest to show them. Nor would it be dishonest for him to go off meds (because of those side effects) and show the contrast between the two and the tough choices he and other sufferers of this disease have to make. Nor would it be dishonest to show Muhammad Ali (where MJF will eventually end up).
But this kind of nuance and deep-thinking is completely beyond the “HULK SMASH” = good foreign policy crowd.
les
If the anti-stem cell research crowd has such an unassailable position, why do they have some looney dame on radio and tv here in Missouri claiming that we should vote against it or thousands of poor and third world young women will be sold into prostitution, rendered infertile or killed providing all the eggs needed for the 800MM embryos required for a single cure? Or that the Mo. law authorizes cloning (despite it’s clear language outlawing it?) Or that new taxes are involved (even though there’s no state funding?) Why the blatant, stupid lies if the simple truth is so easy?
jcricket
Oh how I love rhetorical questions.
When you’re wrong about something, you have to lie to get support for it. See Medicare Plan D, WMD in Iraq, ID is not creationism, Stem Cells = Reproductive Human Cloning, Sex Ed makes people have more sex, Plan B will abort a baby.
Scare tactics and lies are all they have, which is why they continually end up, in the long run, on the losing side of history. It can work for a depressingly long time, but not forever. And in the “information age”, for far less time than in the past. Evolution, global warming, embryonic stem cell research and gay marriage will be studied by historians as yet more issues where Republicans used lies and hyperbole to temporarily stave off society-wide improvements solely so they could retain power. Rest assured, if we keep fighting, they’ll lose. People are already on our side (see the polls on ESC and the trends for gay marriage opposition), but they’re just afraid to admit their Democrats (another temporarily successful result of FUD spread by the Republicans).
The loud noises you hear right now? The death throes of the few Republican dead-enders, no doubt.
rachel
Vote Republican, or the blastocyst gets it!
Wickedpinto
could be
those two words alone invalidate any promises that follow.
I COULD be the biggest dick any particular woman every experienced, but I’m usually not, but who knows? I COULD BE!
Chris
FYI, at my blog I’ve responded to all the comments which interacted with my own (in defense of the humanity and dignity of the human embryo); if anyone of my interlocutors is interested in following up, I’d be happy to continue the discussion in the comboxes there.
Thanks.
jcricket
I know, this thread is dead, but I thought I’d leave this here for posterity.
Republicans and anti-stem cell research activists are lying (surprise) about the number of therapies adult stem cell research has provided in their attempt to claim that adult, not embryonic, stem cells are where research should be conducted.
This is notwithstanding the other lies in their arguments (about how therapies from ESC supposedly require anti-rejection medication, about how long we’ve been researching ESC (only since 1998, and the research was essentially cut off in 2000 because of Bush/Republicans.
Again, since Republicans so desperately hate science, they can’t even use it to support their own cause without lying.
Kasia
“When you’re wrong about something, you have to lie to get support for it.”
You mean like putting up a proposal that would actually legalize human cloning, and saying that it bans it? (MO)
Or like putting up a proposal that would get rid of affirmative action, and claiming that it’s pro-affirmative action? (MI)
If Prop 2 in either state is so good, its supporters shouldn’t have to lie about what it does to get it passed. I don’t care what your politics are; lying is bad, mmkay?
Chris
Also for the sake of posterity, it was documented in July that the authors of the letter cited by jcricket were the one’s being dishonest.
But hey — when there’s (grant) money to be made, there’s nothing wrong with fudging the facts, right?
Also more errors in j’s post: first of all, tons of GOPers support ESCR, so even if it were a matter of “hating science”, it’s not the GOP that should be j’s target.
But the comment itself is extremely confused… if those who *do* oppose ESCR are right — the embryo has the same dignity anyone reading this does — then it’s not a matter of “hating science”, but rather not letting scientists run roughshod over our most cherished values.
But it’s much easier to demonize the other side, isn’t it? And don’t tell me that the GOP does it too… you’re not talking to the GOP, and even if I were a demonizer, why would you want to use the same tactics I do?