IPC Releases White Paper on Neocon War on Embryonic Stem Cell Research
This was originally posted at Talk to Action.
An Unholy Alliance: How Neoconservatives and the Religious Right Have Joined Forces to Fight Stem Cell Research.
For the past twenty-two years the Labor Day weekend has been a bit difficult for me. As someone confined to a wheelchair from LMG muscular dystrophy (first being diagnosed in 1985) I watch (and contribute to) the MDA Telethon. While offering me hope that others are committed to curing the forty plus forms of this degenerative disease, I cannot also help but being reminded of those who evoke a rigid form of faith in order to prevent embryonic stem cell research-an avenue that may one day let folks like me walk again.
Neuromuscular disease is often an ordeal that just doesn't adversely affect the patient, but his friends and family. To provide you with some context, let me explain what my family goes through to keep my law practice going.
Monday through Friday my wife wakes up at 5 A.M. and gets herself ready for work. An hour later she wakes me up then dresses me for court. As since my body does not mostly move of it own volition, she must roll me back and forth to get my pants on, lift me onto a slide board to get me into my wheelchair, lift my arms to get my shirt on and then knot my tie. Then after she gives me breakfast, she attends to getting our kids ready for school. She does all this before working an eight-hour day. I usually leave for court shortly thereafter driven either by my father my uncle or Chris, my driver.
While this is a difficult routine, I still am more fortunate than most others with degenerative diseases. Many others have no job to support themselves, family to help them or even a place to call their own.
One morning during the summer of 2000 my wife was getting me dressed for court. We heard a promising report on the Today Show that then-President Bill Clinton was going to allow for the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. In December 1998 my neurologist had just told us of this then-recent discovery and how it offered so much hope not just for me, but for countless others suffering from different diseases and disabilities. He told us that the research was not a guarantee, but at least a real hope for possible treatments.
But this hope was dashed when the U.S. Supreme Court's decision essentially handed the presidency to George W. Bush. As a candidate, Bush had expressed his hostility to the research, playing to a religious right faction composed of Opus Dei Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants (I would later come to learn that much of this opposition has been organized by neoconservatives, using their several think tanks to hone their message). And as I told my pastor back in 2003, it broke my heart that my own church officially opposes medical research. I told him that I believe that Jesus, who lived His whole life on Earth as a religious Jew would not oppose (all four branches of Judaism support the research; Talmudic scholar Adin Steinsaltz went as far to state, ''We believe that mankind is given not only the permission but the admonition to make the world better.'').
But what I did not understand at the time was how the opposition to embryonic stem cell research was being organized and mostly driven by the very same neoconservatives who helped push this nation into the poorly chosen war in Iraq. Too many of us just don't understand that the neoconservative movement is just not about foreign policy, but domestic policy. The battle over embryonic stem cell research simply emphasizes that point.
As many of you know, I am a director of a newly formed think tank, the Institute for Progressive Christianity ("IPC"). IPC defines its mission as follows:
To further awareness and understanding that the progressive tradition is rooted in core Christian gospel values, and to relate that tradition to personal faith, public policy, family, and the common good.
And this is IPC's vision:
To create a national Institute for progressive Christian values. The Institute will serve as an educational facility to conduct research, seek to affect and advance policy, educate the public, and influence every sphere of American public life, including politics, academia, arts, and the church.
To this end, Eve Herold, the author of last year's book, Stem Cell Wars: Inside Stories from the Frontlines, and I have written a White Paper for IPC entitled, "An Unholy Alliance: How Neoconservatives and the Religious Right Have Joined Forces to Fight Stem Cell Research." Here is our opening premise:
Representatives and the Senate took up the issue of stem cell research once again, re-introducing a bill that had already been vetoed once by President Bush. The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act would have expanded U.S. federal funding (which currently applies to only 21 embryonic stem cell lines) to include about 200 new and superior cell lines. This year's version of the bill was passed in the Senate on April 11, but it fell four votes short of a veto-proof majority. Then the bill passed Congress by a vote of 253 - 174, only to be met once again with the slash of Bush's pen. The president has stood stubbornly by his anti-research policy against the wishes of the Congress, the Senate, and a large majority of the American people. His reason: the destruction of embryos, even for life-saving research, "crosses a moral line" that shouldn't be crossed. This, however, is not the consensus among all religious faiths, let alone among mainstream Christians; it is a narrow proposition held mostly by neo-orthodox Christians. The concept that embryonic research is off-limits is being furthered not just by religious conservatives, but also by their often nonreligious neoconservative allies.
Click here to download and read the document in PDF format. IPC is working on a hyperlink to the story for those who are unable to download the document.
Please feel free to give me your thoughts on the piece.
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feeling free
My cousin Nick died of ALS at the age of 43.
My husband is a physician with spinal cord damage and I am a retired nurse.
I also am a spiritual creative Irish story teller and this is how I expressed my thoughts on this topic, excerpted from "KEEP HOPE ALIVE"
Stem Cell Research and Sex at 69
Jake groaned the instant he heard the distant drone of the approaching Jet Skis coming down the river; and Terese shot him "the look" and he finished her thought; “I know, that is how some people have fun, but they are wrecking havoc on the river, spooking the fish and some of them even toss their trash in the water. It pisses me off how some people have no respect for nature; it just drives me nuts!”
Jake’s sky blue eyes were riveted to the top of a 300 year old live oak where a red shouldered hawk had perched on the uppermost branch. The oak had a sway back that dipped just above the tannic surface of the Withlacoochie River and was enveloped in a fur of fern.
For twenty two years the Hunters had fled Orlando on weekends to retreat in a rustic A Frame log cabin perched on 15 foot stilts and nestled amongst 100 foot cypress, loblolly bay, hickory, live oaks and river willows on the edge of the Withlacoochee State Forest in the boonies near Nobletown.
Terese smirked as she handed her husband of forty eight years a vodka tonic with a twist of lime and thought, “Sometimes it seems as if time has passed so fast and other times it feels like it’s been a billion years.”
Terese was now 69 but had announced at 54 that she was going to remain there the rest of her life. If anyone dared ask her how old she really was, they received "the look," and then the back of her head. Terese was almost five foot flat and wore a three foot long and four inch thick braid down her back. Her hair had once been a rich crimson that had faded to burnished silver and was rarely undone. She weighed three pounds less than on the day she had wed and had born seven children between 1958 and her last one on Christmas Eve ’66. For the entire nine months Terese carried her last babe; Katherine Day, she played Bob Dylan and The Beatles on her state of the art hi fi in the living room. Nobody was surprised when Kat climbed out of her crib at nine months of age and began dancing shortly there after. Kat was diagnosed with ALS the first Monday after that Tuesday in September of 2001. She died in the spring of her thirty seventh year in her childhood bedroom while listening to “The Joshua Tree”
"And so, she woke up
She woke up from where she was: lying still.
Said, "I gotta Do Something, about where were going.
Step on a steam train, step out of the driving rain
Maybe, run from the darkness in the night.
Singing; ah, Allah La La De Day, Allah La La De Day, Allah La La De Day...
...I see seven towers but I only see one way out,
You gotta cry without weeping
Talk without speaking
Scream without raising your voice....
Then I floated outta here
Singing; Allah La La De Day, Allah La La De Day, Allah La De Day....."
Every evening the couple spent an hour together on the balcony of one of their two homes. Tuesday thru Thursday the balcony was at the big house in Orlando on Lake Conway. After a two hour drive every Friday afternoon, they watched the sunset from the balcony attached to the master bedroom at the A-Frame.
Terese could not sit still for more than an hour and when at the river, she only sat in an aged ivoried parchment rattan rocker. She sucked back a straw full of red grapefruit juice, diet tonic with a lot of ice and no Vodka, and studied the white ibises with their orange curved beaks hunt and peck snails and worms at the river’s edge where a natural sandy bank offered turtles, snowy egrets, herons and purple gallinule a place to dry off. Terese mused, “I do imagine I truly am hearing the River Willow’s play a celestial piano with every leaf that looks like a six inch finger of velvet that dances on the lightest of breeze.”
Jake cleared his throat again and announced, “Did you hear me? Do I have to say it again? Old woman, you are either going deaf or- you are ignoring me?”
“Yes, you do have to say it again. Sorry, I had tuned you out. I was hearing music in my head. In fact, I had flashed back to 1958 and our Elvis encounter.”
“I don’t want to talk about that again, let it go old woman.”
“Never! There we were, you a studly 21 year old medical student at Memphis State and me, a new mom who delivered exactly nine months from my wedding night. I was just getting ready to put Ike down when I heard that knock at the front door. And when I opened it, I was face to face with three of Elvis’s boys asking to speak to the weekend piano player at the University Club. I remember that look on your face, how tempted you were to blow off medical school and play piano at night so you could hunt and fish more.”
“Perhaps a fleeting moment of temptation, but I knew the moment I said no thanks, I had made the right choice. And since Elvis and probably most of the boys, are all dead, I am even more grateful. Now please, drop it for the rest of my life.”
“I’ll try, but you know how weak I am. But now I am wondering about what you will say next Tuesday to the powers that be?”
“Finally, you get to my point. That is exactly what I was talking about. I am laying it on the line and I am ready to walk. Enough BS already.”
Jake was the only 69 year old physician in Central Florida who worked 12 hours a day three days a week. He had retired from a demanding Internal Medicine Practice in Winter Park to establish the Geriatric Fellowship Program at Good Samaritan Hospital of Orlando and to become the Medical Director of an upscale 330 resident CCRC/Continuity Care Residential Community and a 220 patient nursing home. Instead of retiring from private practice to hunt and fish full time, he dedicated himself to the training of Geriatricians, Family Practice Residents and green medical students.
“What I said was I am telling the bureaucrats at Mid Florida Medical School that I will do it my way or I will walk away. I am not slowing down to their speed so they can have uniformity in Florida’s five campuses when the medical students that rotate to Orlando are getting immediately plugged into community care situations right here, right now.
“It’s the same old story, the tail wagging the dog, the government intrusion on good patient care is a battle I no longer have the energy or desire to fight. I care about doing the right thing and teaching the right way, not documenting, not covering my ass. The focus on accreditation and looking good on paper is too frequently at odds with mentoring and quality patient care!
"Plus this damn burning down my arms has become non stop constant and their BS is adding to my grief. It really pisses me off that my body is failing me. I have spent my life in the healing arts, but there is no relief for me. Well, except for moderate amounts of vodka and regular sex. But it pisses me off that every time I ride in the jeep, the boat, the tractor, it inflames that damn C6- 7.”
Terese believed one day she would wake up and Jake would be lying next to her paralyzed. Before she would open her eyes every morning she braced herself that Jake might still be there because he was immobile. She daily prayed to escape that fate and for the grace to deal with it without complaint if it did actually happen.
Jake got up from the glider and put his stogie down, “Can I get you another juice?”
“No thanks and before the inevitable next question, you are grilling the last of the Redfish. The next step is yours, I have already done the salad and put the bread in the oven.”
“After this one I’ll turn the grill on.” Jake responded as he poured his third and last drink for the evening. He refused to take pain medication and considered Vodka grace, and never imbibed before six o’clock.
“As I was saying, I have developed the state of the art multi disciplinary approach to patient care to teach today’s learners, and I refuse to slow down to suit the suits in the main office. Already in place and refined to precision efficiency are weekly meetings with the Dr.’s, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, nutritionists and case workers so the whole team knows exactly what has been done and what is being done for our mutual patients. But these bureaucrats want me to slow down and fit into their form. It’s BS!
"They want similarities not innovation, they want mediocrity not genius! Why should I have to document to the powers that be that I am adhering to their standards when I excel far beyond their standards?
"None of the other campuses in Florida have coordinated what I have. From my precision planning and persistent work ethic and the grace of God, the medical students who come to the Orlando campus are exposed to the Geriatric fellowship program, nursing homes, home visits, and the incredibly successful pilot program I began ten years ago that has now kept 2,000 at risk for nursing home placement patients in their very own homes by using the community approach to patient care.
"Do you have any idea how much money we save the system by keeping old folks in their own places? The future must focus on providing the highest level of function in the least restrictive environment; and that is the home. This saves boat loads of money and patients will thrive at home when they have the needed support. If only all families would and could keep their old folks at home. It really pisses me off that so many old folks are in Nursing Homes because there is no family support system. Now, promise me again, you won’t ever put me a nursing home will you?”
“You know I would never do that but now you are just avoiding telling me about your Dr. appointment today.”
“It is as I thought and told you it would be. There is just the normal worsening to be expected when one has the kind of spinal cord damage that I do. Nothing can be done, except pain medicine and you know what a pharmaceutical nihilist I am, I won’t do the drugs. How I hate when every few years I have to take a Medrol Dospak just to get out of bed. I will continue to live my life as best I can until that day I can’t get up. Speaking of getting it up, what time can we get together tomorrow?”
“Well, are you taking the blue one that make your vision orange and may make you blind at any moment, or is it the one with the possibility of a four hour erection?”
“I’ll give you a break; I’ll just take ½ of Viagra at 10 am tomorrow morning. Can you meet me in the shower then?”
“That works for me. Oh, I can’t believe I forgot to tell you what came in the mail today. Jack Hunt, Khaled’s surrogate son and I have stayed in touch. He sent me some CD’s of some of the speakers from a TIKKUN conference he had attended. He also sent a book by a radical priest who nailed a new 95 theses to the same door Martin Luther nailed his too, 500 years before. I am going to read it tonight after you crash and listen to some of these speakers that Jack heard.”
Jake began his day an hour before dawn and he always awoke: wide awake. He whistled while he shaved and dressed but Terese would cover her head with a pillow and would wish he would shut up. She had a rule to never speak until after her third cup of coffee, so instead bit her lip until Jake would be out of ear shot. The couple read different books, had different hobbies and interests, and were both asocial solitaries who gave each other a lot of space but when together; neither was ever bored.
“Jake, sometimes it seems so hard to believe it has been fifteen years since you had to quit playing handball. You were more devastated about that, then ever loosing an erection. It is still so vivid in my mind that day you had the MRI and we were all so sure you had ALS. I sat in that waiting room praying for a miracle and then the radiologist came out and asked me where your wheelchair was because he had never seen anyone with as severe a herniation of C 6-7 walking around before. And you played handball the day before!”
“I figured I had ALS back then. I still am pissed that Kat got it instead of me. But, I certainly had all the classic symptoms and my cousin Nick had been diagnosed with it right at the same time that I was admitting my body was failing me.”
“I suppose for the rest of our lives everyday we will remember Nick and Kat.”
“That’s how it should be. They remain present when we remember them. No matter how horrific the burning down my arms is, how annoying these spastic muscle spasms are, nor how sometimes I fall down because of my foot drop, I am grateful to have spinal cord damage and not ALS. After fifteen years I am still able to be productive and contributing to society and be fully independent. If I had had ALS, I would have been dead over ten years ago. When I imagine what gifts the world lost when my cousin Nick and our Kat succumbed to Lou Gehrig’s Disease at such early ages, it proves once more how fragile and fleeting is life and how precious every day truly is. Nick was going to concerts up until a few weeks before he died at peace while his wife slept next to him. What a gift to go peacefully and without disturbing anyone. Nick never complained about the cards he was dealt and everyone in his presence knew they were blessed just to know him.”
“Yes, but Kat was a different story. She was wired for action and when she lost the use of her legs she lashed out in anger. It wasn’t easy caring for her but I always understood she needed to get it out. When she finally arrived at a place of peace it was a joy to care for her. I miss her so much but imagine she and Nick are both now dancing for that must be what happens a lot in Heaven. Oh, Jake, that reminds me of Jacks letter, hold on.”
Terese was out of the chair and into the hallway while Jake muttered, “Damn, what I wouldn’t give for a cure or prevention for ALS, spinal cord injuries and juvenile diabetes. Stem cell research has enormous potential to provide the answers that will lead to real healing. What a gift that would be to humanity.”
Terese returned and announced, “Hold that thought, and listen to what Jack wrote when he sent me this package: ‘When I read number 36 in A New Reformation, I thought of your daughter Kat and wanted you to know that Father Fox penned exactly what you had already thought, that for Kat, dancing was how she prayed. Fox wrote: Dancing, whose root meaning in many indigenous cultures is the same as breath or spirit, is a very ancient and appropriate form in which to pray.'"
“Remember that old German opera house proverb? Bach gave us God’s word. Mozart gave us God’s laughter. Beethoven gave us God’s fire. God gave us music that we might pray without words.”
The couple went silent until the sun had set then Terese got up and said, “I am hungry. Get the grill on and then I want to talk to you about that article you gave me to read in The New England Journal of Medicine, about Stem Cell research." She picked up the July 7, 2005 Journal flipped to page 5 as she said, "It was way over my head, but I did understand that Korea is doing advanced research and having success. The bottom line I got from this article was that America’s, here it is; 'present policies make no sense at all, because their only consequence is to make the research go more slowly.'"
Over Cajun spiced Redfish and fresh garden vegetables and bread that had burnt more than a little Jake assumed his lecturer role and informed Terese, “IF it is actually true that the Koreans have been able to take a fresh egg, remove the nucleus and transfer the nucleus of a diseased tissue cell the next step is to grow that cell line in a culture to determine where the cell goes bad and the disease process begins. Then science will seek to learn how to prevent that disruption in the cell which will lead us to learn how to heal, and not just treat symptoms. Medicine seeks to heal and I imagine The Divine Physician wants us to learn all we can so that we may heal and not just treat symptoms. God speaks to us in so many ways; science, medicine, technology and ethics. The conundrum is, do we use the technology just because we have it?”
“Jake, I think God does want us to use our full potential, to use our minds and imaginations so we can do good things to help people. Witnessing a loved ones suffering is not easy and how much more difficult it is for the sufferer! We should be compassionate and learn all we can to help another. I don’t like the thought that science would be using what could be a baby and I certainly would not want to make the decision as to when life begins.”
“There is no reason to use any cells that are older than two weeks. Until the fourteenth day after fertilization of the egg there is no identity as a human being. At two weeks the central cleavage occurs and this is when twinning occurs. But now, consider when does the soul arrive?”
“Jake, you know I believe we develop our souls as we live our life and that everything is grace.”
“Everything is grace, and maybe you are right about the soul. I just don’t know.”
“Well how can anyone really know? The best we can do is imagine and that’s what I imagine; that it takes a lifetime to develop a soul.”
“What will you think when some soulless scientists clones a human being?”
“Too creepy. Do you really think it will happen?”
“Who knows what another will do? But look again at that article in the Journal and you will see a table listing key elements of the national Academies’ Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research. The Academy has previously stated that absolutely no research at reproductive cloning of a human should be conducted. I do suppose it can happen, some people have too much money for their own good and not every scientist nor physician is ethical. The thing is, American government policy cannot control the scientific world. Our research is lagging far behind and it’s like trying to out law guns and drugs. As long as there is a market, there will be providers.
"The other thing is the French and South Koreans are so far ahead of us we may never catch up. I wonder if the noises Bill Frist and Nancy Reagan have been making on this issue can influence the President to rethink his stand?
"I imagine any thing can be turned around with the right dialogue and the facts on the ground are that all over America embryos are being flushed down a drain because the couples whom they belong to no longer want any more children and do not want to donate their left over embryos to infertile couples."
"Jake, I think you just hit the nail on the head, being pro life means one honors ALL life and NOT waste the potential of any life form."
"AMEN."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PS Dear Reader,
This was written in October 2005, before we knew the South Koreans lied!
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"