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EDITORIAL: Stem Cell Research Key Issue in Election

By Victoria Advocate, Texas
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/...urce=r_health#

Oct. 28--Rush Limbaugh lurched up from the mental haze in which abusing prescription drugs for so long enshrouds him to take a potshot at actor Michael J. Fox for making political ads backing candidates who support embryonic stem cell research.

And he missed.

Fox, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1991, looks to be in bad shape in the ad running in Missouri. Not because of drug abuse like Limbaugh's but because of an illness that embryonic stem cell treatment ultimately might be able to help.

Granted, Limbaugh has closer ties to Missouri, than the Canadian-born actor does. Limbaugh is a Missouri native from a distinguished political family.

It is also true that actors who parachute into places where they have few, if any ties, to back candidates or causes deserve far less attention than their celebrity status buys them.

Even so, as someone who lives with Parkinson's, Fox has a greater and far more personal stake in the twofold Missouri debate than does Limbaugh.

"Michael has put a face on Parkinson's across the country and internationally. He is a well-respected figure in the Parkinson community because of the work he's done and what he's experiencing," Kevin Brown, the executive director of the Parkinson Chapter of Greater Pittsburgh, told the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette.

It matters to Fox whether Missouri voters approve an amendment to the state Constitution that would keep all forms of embryonic stem cell research that are legal under federal law also legal under state law.

It matters because researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis or at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City might be the ones who develop embryonic stem cell therapy for Parkinson's.

But they could not do that if, absent the proposed constitutional amendment, the Missouri General Assembly later were to outlaw embryonic stem cell research, as some Republican state legislators already have tried to do.

And it matters to Fox whether Missouri voters re-elect a U.S. senator who agrees with President Bush and opposes expanded federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, as incumbent Republican Jim Talent does.

The senator's Democratic challenger, state Auditor Claire McCaskill, supports additional funding that ultimately could lead to the development of embryonic stem cell therapy for Parkinson's and for many other diseases and disabilities. That is why Fox made a painful-to-watch TV ad backing her.

Limbaugh alleges that in the ad, Fox "was either off his medication or acting. He is an actor after all."

From personal experience, Limbaugh does know quite a bit about drug use and abuse, as well as breaking the law to do it.

"The irony of it is that I was too medicated" while making the McCaskill ad, Fox told CBS News' Katie Couric. "I just take it, and it kicks in when it kicks in. That's funny -- the notion that you could calculate it for effect. Would that we could."

Given Limbaugh's tenuous grasp on reality -- not entirely attributable to his illegal drug problems -- we are inclined to take Fox at his word.

But even if the actor is stretching the truth as much as Limbaugh typically does, medication did not give him the debilitating and ultimately life-threatening disease that caused him to twitch and weave while filming the McCaskill ad.

Medication can only control some of the effects of Parkinson's, just as medication can only control the effects of many other diseases and disabilities. In those instances, drugs do not offer any hope of cures.

While it is possible to overhype the hope embryonic stem cell research -- and all types of stem cell research -- ultimately will deliver, many scientists at the nation's top research institutions believe this holds greater possibilities for cures and for treatments than current medications, and without the side effects they often cause.

That matters greatly to Michael J. Fox, just as it matters to the more than 120 million Americans the White House in August 2001 estimated might be helped by embyronic stem cell research.

So the outcome of the U.S. Senate race in Missouri and the outcome of the other races in which the actor made TV ads matters greatly, too.