It is, of course, no surprise to you, but the disconnect between significant portions of the prestige media types and the rest of us grows more obvious by the moment. Even as the American public collectively reaches out to bid farewell to President Ronald Reagan, some of the tin-eared media elite are suggesting that perhaps treatment of the 40th President’s death and funeral arrangements has been “over-covered,†to quote NBC’s Tom Brokaw.
Sometimes you wonder if these guys are living on the same planet as the rest of us. Were they actually seeing, as opposed to just watching, what they’d understand is that an enormous number of people who came to the funeral home in California and then to the Capitol Rotunda would have been very young (or not even born) when Mr. Reagan served his two terms in the l980s. But people young and old recognize that he was a larger-than-life figure, who brought out the best in us, and who personally retained a genuine sense of humility until the very end.
Through this last week, Nancy Reagan has been amazing. The lives of few couples were knitted together more completely than the Reagans. Her deep pain at her husband’s death--a man whom she lovingly cared for through the long ten years of his Alzheimer’s disease–is transparent.
That is why even though I disagree, I understand fully why Mrs. Reagan said what she did at a May 8 fund-raiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. She told the celebrity-studded affair that Alzheimer’s had taken her husband “to a distant place where I can no longer reach him and share our 52 years.â€
According to the Associated Press, Mrs. Reagan then added, “Science has presented us with a hope called stem cell research, which may provide our scientists with many answers that for so long have been beyond our grasp. I just don’t see how we can turn our backs on this.â€
Tragically, Mrs. Reagan has succumbed to the mythology about stem cells from human embryos that is almost impervious to fact. No one understands this better than bioethicist Wesley Smith.
In a June 8 online column, Smith quoted New York Times political columnist William Safire on the issue of adult stem cell versus embryonic stem cell.
Safire’s argument was that adult stem cells are one of those “some day†pie-in-the-sky therapies. But “Safire has it completely backwards,†Smith writes.“Cloning is in its embryonic stage. Even if it could be used as an efficacious treatment (though that is a gargantuan ‘if’), its success would be a decade or more away. But adult-stem-cell and related tissue therapies are already treating human maladies. Indeed, ignored by Safire and other advocates, the science is moving forward at an exhilarating pace both here and abroad in animal and human studies.â€
Meanwhile, the “mainstream press†goes on apace, hyping one and diminishing the other. But, I’m glad to say, a few rays of truth are occasionally penetrating the fog of hype and misrepresentation.
Rick Weiss writes for the Washington Post and is as enthusiastic a proponent of embryonic stem cell therapy as you can imagine. But his article in today’s Post is headlined, “Stem Cells An Unlikely Therapy for Alzheimer's.†(You can read it its entirety at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2956 1-2004Jun9.html)
Weiss begins by highlighting all the attention to Alzheimer’s disease resulting from Mr. Reagan’s death and his wife’s comments last month, along with a letter sent to President Bush by a number of senators who want him “to loosen his restrictions on the controversial research, which requires the destruction of human embryos.â€
This is the “kind of advocacy that researchers have craved for years, and none wants to slow its momentum,†Weiss writes. The only problem is an “infrequently voiced reality, stem cell experts confess.â€
What might that be? “[O]f all the diseases that may someday be cured by embryonic stem cell treatments, Alzheimer's is among the least likely to benefit.†Why this would be so is easy to understand.
"The complex architecture of the brain, the fact that it's a diffuse disease with neuronal loss in numerous places and with synaptic loss, all this is a problem" for any strategy involving cell replacement, Huntington Potter, a brain researcher at the University of South Florida in Tampa and chief executive of the Johnnie B. Byrd Institute for Alzheimer's Research, told Weiss.
To be sure, the tireless Weiss trots out the usual line about the promise of embryonic stem cells for curing other diseases and avoids altogether even a mention of alternative, unobjectionable sources. But even so, his article is very helpful.
A final thought. Laura Bush’s father died from Alzheimer’s. Appearing Wednesday on CBS’s “Early Show,†she spoke eloquently of the trials families go through. Mrs. Bush praised Mrs. Reagan as a role model for families struggling with this disease.
To her credit, Mrs. Bush did her best to avoid disagreeing with Mrs. Reagan at this most sensitive time. But when asked bluntly whether she was prepared to endorse Mrs. Reagan’s call to remove restrictions on the use of federal dollars to underwrite stem cell research that requires the destruction of human embryos, Mrs. Bush said, “No.â€
Tomorrow we will conclude our week-long tribute to President Reagan. Please watch as much of the coverage as you can today and tomorrow. Encourage your children to do likewise.
posted by: dahar (reply)
post date: 06.11.04 (5:58 pm)
One man dies, we take a minute of silence and remember him for his services, his problems are over.
The living still have a lifetime, more problems than you can shake a gipper at, and hence need all the time that we can give them.
We've covered it enough, let's move on, lest we start looking like a theocratic monarchy by unduly offering our respects.
It is, of course, no surprise to you, but the disconnect between significant portions of the prestige media types and the rest of us grows more obvious by the moment. Even as the American public collectively reaches out to bid farewell to President Ronald Reagan, some of the tin-eared media elite are suggesting that perhaps treatment of the 40th President’s death and funeral arrangements has been “over-covered,†to quote NBC’s Tom Brokaw.