[SherylJ]

I applaud Michael J. Fox's decision to establish an organization (Cures and Hope USA) for "educating the electorate on a pro-science agenda and helping voters make informed decisions in 2008." Education and voter turnout are the best weapons a democratic society has for eliciting positive change. I am proud to stand beside Mike every step of the way as he illuminates the high road going forward.

What we're up against is a president who ignored the wishes of two-thirds of Americans by vetoing a bill that would have eased restraints on federally funded embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). Mr. Bush argues that ESCR "crosses an ethical line" by compelling taxpayers to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos to save the lives of others.

How ethical is it to have created 40,000 excess embryos from in vitro fertilization (IVF), knowing they would eventually end up in the trash? The surest way to prevent the destruction of these embryos is not to create them in the first place, but I've yet to hear Mr. Bush oppose IVF or suggest it would be more ethical for couples to adopt children already here and waiting for families to love them.

It seems to me that Bush's stance speaks for itself and has nothing to do with ethics, and everything to do with arrogance and hypocrisy.

Sheryl

[jeanb]

After the Rush Limbaugh debacle - Michael J Fox went around the U.S. promoting stem cells at different political rallies. His coming to Arizona made a difference! I believe it was due to his visit & rally that voters threw out a Rep who was anti-stem cells & voted in a pro-stem cells Rep.

I'm looking forward to learning more about his new org: Cures and Hope USA.

[vlhperry]

As usual I am wondering about how selective the information is that will be fed to the electorate. I am in a difficult position to argue against stem cell research.

I have always been against abortions and invitro fertilization. Because President Bush was not the president when the Supreme Court decided in favor of Wade does not imply that he approved of the Supreme Court's decision. Nor was he in office when invtro fertilization became available. In Minnesota, a young woman and her husband recently watched their sextuplets (6 babies) die off one by one. You and I can't possibly understand the agony this young couple went through spending day after day for 2 weeks watching their hopes of having children, conceived through in vitro fertilization, as each child was claimed by death. Everyone supports everyone elses wants because they have the same wants. What about the responsibilities of allowing everyone their wants?

If you look on children as a right to have and not a gift given to teach you how to care more for someone more than you care for yourself, you support assisted conception. Because Bush cannot turn back the hands of time is no reason to assume he supports assisted conception. He cannot argue from a prolife position because even a president cannot push back the turn of the popular vote.

The woman's right's movement ushered in invitro fertilization and abortion. Because some women felt devalued by society they began to successfully force society to grant them equal status as men. Woman demanded equal wages as men received for equal jobs, welfare boomed as young women chose to make babies in an environment that encouraged love, not war. daycare became a organized form of work, sexually confused people, confused about their gender, demanded the right to have their gender surgically altered and the entire two parent family system that had worked for hundreds of generations was destroyed.

Divorce is now over 50%, couples are finding that in order to make it financially, both couples must work, stressing out both parents and forcing children to follow strict schedules filled with soccer games, baseball, gymnastics and other activities by parents who both work and want the children's schedules to be to full so they won't have to worry about what the children are doing while they make their career their primary focus in life, other children sit home alone watching television which is their parent from whom they learn their values, children join gangs because they have to fill their need to be a part of a family.

Today we are having families with record foreclosures of their mortgages, inflation of gas prices, making it harder and harder for two parents to support a family. The woman's choice to work or stay home no longer exists. Both parents must work. An education beyond high school no longer has value as so many people have one. Employers want workers with education and experience. With both parents working the workforce has swelled to the point where finding a job is harder.

Will our generation continue to demand our rights and waive the responsibilities, telling our government that it is their responsibility to see to it we are able to achieve our rights? Do we continue to impose the right to bear children or will we learn that children are a gift for us to care for and not make them bear the responsibility of making us feel whole?

The generation following us is beginning to hold on dearly to responsibility over rights. They spent their entire childhood trying to satisfy parents who have high expectations of them and do not wish to do the same to their children. Some of our children are having children to have the love they lacked from their parents. It seems sad that such high expectations should be put on a newborn baby. If the baby doesn't fill the childmother's expectations, at best he is turned over to the grandparents to raise, at worst he is thrown in a garbage dumpster or in a river to die.

I cannot support, and have never supported the miracle of childbirth being created as a gift and not as a right.

Sincerely,
Vicky Lynn

[Thelma]

Wow I assume you are not as old as I am and don't have any experience as to what it used to be like. I remember.

You would not have liked it and perhaps not survived it as many many women didn't.

Barefoot and pregnant was not as it is seen today merely a phrase to use it was reality.

Children had no rights, their mothers had no rights and women in general were owned by the men in thier lives be it husband father or even brother.

By the time the second world war was over women had earned the rights to hold down paying job and care for their children. Yet they still had to give their jobs to the men returning. Not all of these men returned to their wives and children in the condition they left. I am not talking about physical wounds but the myriad of emotional and mental problems that took the toll on marriages.

If you blame the womens movement for that then you are in for a surprise when the men from this conflict return. Some of their experiences are not condusive to a happy marriage let alone a happy life for themselves and the problems may not show for years but they will.

I like reading what you have read but hon I have lived it and no amount of reading has proven to me that the next generation is any better than the last and this is because of the useless lying wars not the fault of women having human rights.

Okay now back to MIchael J Fox. His fight is the fight for you and all suffering from Neurological diseases and others as well and not just for himself.

He is not a walkling stem cell advertisement. He is a human being who cares far beyond what is deserved by some and does his work for all in less than perfect health.

He came home here just a couple of weeks ago to hold his annual golf tournement for kids wanting to try and get into the acting business and the theatre named after him here. He looked tired and worn out but true to form put a form of a smile on his face and braved the public to raise monies that will never see a stem cell.

So then lets go back to the original post and the great work he does for us all. Sheryl and he deserve our attention.

[vlhperry]

At the end of World War II, women had proven their ability to keep the countries war production up. The women who ended up "barefoot and pregnant" made poor choices for fathers. I know because I was one of those "poor choices" as my father fought in Korea and came home changed into a pedephile. Would I have preferred my mother to conveniently have me sucked out of her womb piece by piece and never have a chance at life?

I lived through the abuse having faith that my father would not always have power over my life. Perhaps many of you came from the generation before me who fought during World War II or the Korean war. That generation lived through the depression and learned to pinch pennies. Unfortunately, they were determined to make their children's lives better and gave their children all the things they had to do without.

The main point of my post above is part of what Shari posted. She stated her opinions well, until she ended with:
"How ethical is it to have created 40,000 excess embryos from in vitro fertilization (IVF), knowing they would eventually end up in the trash? The surest way to prevent the destruction of these embryos is not to create them in the first place, but I've yet to hear Mr. Bush oppose IVF or suggest it would be more ethical for couples to adopt children already here and waiting for families to love them.

It seems to me that Bush's stance speaks for itself and has nothing to do with ethics, and everything to do with arrogance and hypocrisy.
"

Her judgement of George Bush was came from guesswork and not facts. If she is able to confirm the George Bush never was against abortion or invitro fertilization and its results, then proof should be provided not just assumptions. No one can speak for me about stem cells but me when I go to the polls, including Mr. Fox. While I have great admiration for his willingness to use his fame to make a difference; I do not agree with what he considers what a positive difference is. I don't support stem cell research for my own sound reasons.

Vicky

[vlhperry]

Office of the Press Secretary
August 9, 2001

President Discusses Stem Cell Research


8:01 P.M. CDT

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. I appreciate you giving me a few minutes of your time tonight so I can discuss with you a complex and difficult issue, an issue that is one of the most profound of our time.

The issue of research involving stem cells derived from human embryos is increasingly the subject of a national debate and dinner table discussions. The issue is confronted every day in laboratories as scientists ponder the ethical ramifications of their work. It is agonized over by parents and many couples as they try to have children, or to save children already born.

The issue is debated within the church, with people of different faiths, even many of the same faith coming to different conclusions. Many people are finding that the more they know about stem cell research, the less certain they are about the right ethical and moral conclusions.

My administration must decide whether to allow federal funds, your tax dollars, to be used for scientific research on stem cells derived from human embryos. A large number of these embryos already exist. They are the product of a process called in vitro fertilization, which helps so many couples conceive children. When doctors match sperm and egg to create life outside the womb, they usually produce more embryos than are planted in the mother. Once a couple successfully has children, or if they are unsuccessful, the additional embryos remain frozen in laboratories.

Some will not survive during long storage; others are destroyed. A number have been donated to science and used to create privately funded stem cell lines. And a few have been implanted in an adoptive mother and born, and are today healthy children.

Based on preliminary work that has been privately funded, scientists believe further research using stem cells offers great promise that could help improve the lives of those who suffer from many terrible diseases -- from juvenile diabetes to Alzheimer's, from Parkinson's to spinal cord injuries. And while scientists admit they are not yet certain, they believe stem cells derived from embryos have unique potential.

You should also know that stem cells can be derived from sources other than embryos -- from adult cells, from umbilical cords that are discarded after babies are born, from human placenta. And many scientists feel research on these type of stem cells is also promising. Many patients suffering from a range of diseases are already being helped with treatments developed from adult stem cells.

However, most scientists, at least today, believe that research on embryonic stem cells offer the most promise because these cells have the potential to develop in all of the tissues in the body.

Scientists further believe that rapid progress in this research will come only with federal funds. Federal dollars help attract the best and brightest scientists. They ensure new discoveries are widely shared at the largest number of research facilities and that the research is directed toward the greatest public good.

The United States has a long and proud record of leading the world toward advances in science and medicine that improve human life. And the United States has a long and proud record of upholding the highest standards of ethics as we expand the limits of science and knowledge. Research on embryonic stem cells raises profound ethical questions, because extracting the stem cell destroys the embryo, and thus destroys its potential for life. Like a snowflake, each of these embryos is unique, with the unique genetic potential of an individual human being.

As I thought through this issue, I kept returning to two fundamental questions: First, are these frozen embryos human life, and therefore, something precious to be protected? And second, if they're going to be destroyed anyway, shouldn't they be used for a greater good, for research that has the potential to save and improve other lives?

I've asked those questions and others of scientists, scholars, bioethicists, religious leaders, doctors, researchers, members of Congress, my Cabinet, and my friends. I have read heartfelt letters from many Americans. I have given this issue a great deal of thought, prayer and considerable reflection. And I have found widespread disagreement.

On the first issue, are these embryos human life -- well, one researcher told me he believes this five-day-old cluster of cells is not an embryo, not yet an individual, but a pre-embryo. He argued that it has the potential for life, but it is not a life because it cannot develop on its own.

An ethicist dismissed that as a callous attempt at rationalization. Make no mistake, he told me, that cluster of cells is the same way you and I, and all the rest of us, started our lives. One goes with a heavy heart if we use these, he said, because we are dealing with the seeds of the next generation.

And to the other crucial question, if these are going to be destroyed anyway, why not use them for good purpose -- I also found different answers. Many argue these embryos are byproducts of a process that helps create life, and we should allow couples to donate them to science so they can be used for good purpose instead of wasting their potential. Others will argue there's no such thing as excess life, and the fact that a living being is going to die does not justify experimenting on it or exploiting it as a natural resource.

At its core, this issue forces us to confront fundamental questions about the beginnings of life and the ends of science. It lies at a difficult moral intersection, juxtaposing the need to protect life in all its phases with the prospect of saving and improving life in all its stages.

As the discoveries of modern science create tremendous hope, they also lay vast ethical mine fields. As the genius of science extends the horizons of what we can do, we increasingly confront complex questions about what we should do. We have arrived at that brave new world that seemed so distant in 1932, when Aldous Huxley wrote about human beings created in test tubes in what he called a "hatchery."

In recent weeks, we learned that scientists have created human embryos in test tubes solely to experiment on them. This is deeply troubling, and a warning sign that should prompt all of us to think through these issues very carefully.

Embryonic stem cell research is at the leading edge of a series of moral hazards. The initial stem cell researcher was at first reluctant to begin his research, fearing it might be used for human cloning. Scientists have already cloned a sheep. Researchers are telling us the next step could be to clone human beings to create individual designer stem cells, essentially to grow another you, to be available in case you need another heart or lung or liver.

I strongly oppose human cloning, as do most Americans. We recoil at the idea of growing human beings for spare body parts, or creating life for our convenience. And while we must devote enormous energy to conquering disease, it is equally important that we pay attention to the moral concerns raised by the new frontier of human embryo stem cell research. Even the most noble ends do not justify any means.

My position on these issues is shaped by deeply held beliefs. I'm a strong supporter of science and technology, and believe they have the potential for incredible good -- to improve lives, to save life, to conquer disease. Research offers hope that millions of our loved ones may be cured of a disease and rid of their suffering. I have friends whose children suffer from juvenile diabetes. Nancy Reagan has written me about President Reagan's struggle with Alzheimer's. My own family has confronted the tragedy of childhood leukemia. And, like all Americans, I have great hope for cures.

I also believe human life is a sacred gift from our Creator. I worry about a culture that devalues life, and believe as your President I have an important obligation to foster and encourage respect for life in America and throughout the world. And while we're all hopeful about the potential of this research, no one can be certain that the science will live up to the hope it has generated.

Eight years ago, scientists believed fetal tissue research offered great hope for cures and treatments -- yet, the progress to date has not lived up to its initial expectations. Embryonic stem cell research offers both great promise and great peril. So I have decided we must proceed with great care.

As a result of private research, more than 60 genetically diverse stem cell lines already exist. They were created from embryos that have already been destroyed, and they have the ability to regenerate themselves indefinitely, creating ongoing opportunities for research. I have concluded that we should allow federal funds to be used for research on these existing stem cell lines, where the life and death decision has already been made.

Leading scientists tell me research on these 60 lines has great promise that could lead to breakthrough therapies and cures. This allows us to explore the promise and potential of stem cell research without crossing a fundamental moral line, by providing taxpayer funding that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos that have at least the potential for life.

I also believe that great scientific progress can be made through aggressive federal funding of research on umbilical cord placenta, adult and animal stem cells which do not involve the same moral dilemma. This year, your government will spend $250 million on this important research.

I will also name a President's council to monitor stem cell research, to recommend appropriate guidelines and regulations, and to consider all of the medical and ethical ramifications of biomedical innovation. This council will consist of leading scientists, doctors, ethicists, lawyers, theologians and others, and will be chaired by Dr. Leon Kass, a leading biomedical ethicist from the University of Chicago.

This council will keep us apprised of new developments and give our nation a forum to continue to discuss and evaluate these important issues. As we go forward, I hope we will always be guided by both intellect and heart, by both our capabilities and our conscience.

I have made this decision with great care, and I pray it is the right one.

Thank you for listening. Good night, and God bless America.

[vlhperry]

If you support in vitro fertilization so mothers can have children who are unable to naturally; how can you claim they are not life when they were not used as science intended? Are they potential babies or potential spare parts?

[Thelma]

"At the end of WW2 women had proven their abilities to keep the countries war production up ', true but there was no longer any wars to be won or lost hence no jobs beyond those few that could return to normal production as before the war and so no need for women any longer. no jobs no women needed. So the only jobs that could be had went to the returning men.

Uncle Sam had his boys home and while it was boys who went away and left their girls behind it was men who returned to the women now waiting. Nothing was as before the war.

The comment barefoot and pregnant was meant to insinuate that women were to go back as it was as their men who would take care of them were home now. Most of the women were pregnant very shortly after the men returned in the hurry to make up for those lost years. Some were happy but some had had a taste of freedom and didn't want to have more babies around.

But there was no birth control back then except for the self control of both men and women and in the state of marriage sometimes their was little choice. People being what and who they were.

Lots of these marriages failed from the strain and even those that didn't felt the strain of additional mouths to feed and house.

There was abortions back then that were horrendous in nature and the life of the woman was always in danger from them. Both men and women had to face this decision and it could not have been easy. I remember one particular woman who lhad an abortion and never got over the physical harm she later endured because of it.

No hospitalizations for these women in case someone found out. No health care insurance in that time anyways till Blue Cross came in later on.

Those were the days you were given a certain number of days to be in hospital and if longer you paid or left. But that is a different story and you don't want to get me started on that.

At the time of the Korean war things had so improved. It wasn't as long and we did not have a heavy involvement. I am sorry about what your father was like but paedophilia is not a condition brought on by war that aI know of.

Many women have in thier lives made poor choices of husbands, including me, but that is a problem for both sexes. We have in a sinse been lucky in the past as when the breakup come we had the children to keep with us and I always felt bad forthe decent men who wanted their children and perhaps could have been a much better parent than the mother was. I believe a lot of marriages stayed because of the father not wanting to give up custody of the children.

The generation who the second world war were not the generation of the depression. sure they were the children of it as I was but as a child the problems were ot mine to care about. I don't thilnk any generation gives to the children all that they missed in their lives unless those things existed in their childhood.

The last three generations have seen such progress that each one had all new inventions in the homes and playgrounds that the parents had a hard time keeing up. But pennypinchers for their kids I don't think so. Not everyone was on skid row in the depression as the home next to you was in the same boat as you were and all was in a sense abnormal yet normal if lyou know what I mean. But it made good reading and writers took many liberties of that time but it never could be told as well in a book till the movie came out. Then the true story could be embellished and all could cry.

In response to what Sheryl wrote and the remark made here of the smart way to prevent the destruction of these embryos is to not creat them in the first place. is a good one. But who is the super dooper human being that has the smarts to see into the future and predict that the partner he or she is with will not change from what they have been to acheive this union and progress or reverse into another form that can not be ther to see the child through life.

I know of no one who practices this or ever did.

I am not making any judgement on george bush as that will be done by history in it's own inimitable way it has of dethroning the mighty. Anyones choice about politics is theirs only of course but not to hear each others opinions is to walk back into the same trap or as many call it war.

George will be judged by the amount of weapons of mass destruction that are still to be found. Till they are this war is illegal.

So many young boys have died and won't be coming home as men and that is the crime.

I listen to the news regularly and hear all sides of every story. Each has a comomon element, died today, monies being spent, civilians killed, Nicky what's her name, monies stolen by Black and his cronies,will Al Gore run again,.

Garbage

Stem cells, are they the answer or not, do you know anyone here for sure, if so prove it to me and I will stop this imediately.

Hell I may be really old but while there is life in the old Babe she doesn't have to waste it chasing a dream. MJF needs a rest as well I suspect.

Many times in my long life I never took a stand as I didn't want to cause waves. Noe let the water come.

Whoops shouldn't put that in when a member has just been flooded but it sounds good so what the hey.

I have benefitted by my inaction as well as those who fought the fight for me and that is not good. Now is payback time and while you say you have sound reasons I say good on you and I wish I shared them as you seem so positive that you have the right answer. I hope they hold up to scrutiny.

I don't feel the need to fight as hard as I used to with the information coming in on all sides of the house and the world that the cure is while not here yet definitely in sight.

I don't have the time to wait and see the dance but I am sure I will hear the music.

Your a great bunch

[Thelma]

He doesn't get it and he will never get it. Iraq shows what length he will go to to prove a lie is the truth. He really doesn't know the difference.

What is the difference between an 18 or 19 year old boy and GB

One knows what he hopes he is dying for and the other knows who killed him.

What is the difference between one with an undevoloped brain and GB

Neither know it

Fingers flapping in the wind.......cigar waving....hhhmmmmhhh...I got a million of them

[olsen]

for young individuals past the age of puberty who have received chemotherapy and/or radiation for cancer, pre-harvesting eggs or saving sperm may be the only way in which they may procreate. (For any individual who has undergone these therapies, this method affords them a chance to have children.) I know of several individuals who did undergo chemotherapy/radiation who now have children because their oncologist thought to have them preserve their eggs or sperm. science gave them this chance. I think this is both a remarkable and a good thing....

thelma, love the jokes...madelyn