Posted by James on July 06, 2001 at 10:54:38:
Saving Lives Gets Political
Ellis Henican
George W. Bush ought to look straight into the eyes of Wendy Schmidt.
Perhaps he'd like to explain to her why the federal government should starve the most promising medical research being conducted today, a set of experiments that could well save the life of her 17-year-old son.
The boy's name is Tom. The disease is juvenile diabetes. He's had it for four years. The experiments are known, collectively, as stem-cell research.
"My child could be cured within five years, people say, if this research is allowed to continue," the mother was saying yesterday. "But Mr. Bush is focused on how many votes he might lose over this research. And now that may affect my child's chance of survival. I'm sorry, but that's an outrage." Wendy Schmidt's family isn't alone in this. Stem-cell research is bringing hope to people with heart failure, brain illnesses, Parkinson's disease, spinal injuries, even AIDS. The research has the blessing of virtually every major research and scientific organization. Eighty Nobel laureates just signed a statement supporting federal funding for stem-cell research.
But some Republicans are trying to ignore all that. Because stem-cell research involves human embryos in a laboratory, the science has been attacked by the adamant wing of the right-to-life movement. They want to cut off all federal funding, drastically slowing the progress. We have a president now who tends to listen when these people start to speak.
George Bush should include parents like Wendy Schmidt in the dialogue.
Her son is far better off than many others who are praying that the federal money flows. Better off than Christopher Reeve, sitting still in a wheelchair.
Better off than Michael J. Fox, shaking with Parkinson's.
Tom is an athletic, outgoing teenager with great grades, plenty of friends and sky-high SAT scores. He plays on the baseball team at the Fieldston School in Riverdale.
But he deals with his diabetes, every single day of his life.
"He constantly monitors his blood sugar and constantly watches everything he puts in his mouth," his mother said. "Every day is a struggle to juggle how much you eat, what you eat, how much insulin to take and what your activity level is. Even if you have perfect control, which he does not, chances are you are going to develop some kind of life-threatening complication and your life will be shortened, on average, by 15 years." That's just a fact of this disease.
"The last thing you want is for your insulin to go low in the middle of a baseball game," the mother said. "So you keep yourself a little high, in the long run causing yourself damage. But if you go low, you can go unconscious on the field. Seventeen is a vulnerable age." In the four years since her son was diagnosed, Wendy Schmidt has grown increasingly involved in efforts to find a cure. She's volunteered her time.
She's lobbied politicians. She's helped raise money for diabetes research.
She's read up on obscure medical issues. She's now president-elect of the New York City Chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and she's taken on the stem-cell fight like a holy war.
On the medical front, much of the hope today centers around something called islet transplantation.
"The big problem is that there aren't enough islets to go around," Schmidt said. "In any given year, there may in the U.S. be 5,000 donor pancreases up for grabs. Of that 5,000, some are for straight pancreatic transplants. To get enough islet cells for a transplant, you need two pancreases for every diabetes patient. It doesn't add up." That's where the stem cells come in. "Scientists believe that through embryonic stem cells, they will be able to grow an endless supply of islets," Schmidt said.
No one can say for certain where Bush will come down. Will the federal government do its part? Or will this vital research be left to private efforts, foreign countries and profit-seeking corporations? A decision is expected this month.
And the politics are difficult to read.
Some staunch abortion foes, like Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, have come out in favor of stem-cell research, saying its promise is too great to ignore.
White House political chief Karl Rove is leading the opposition. And while Catholic Church leaders are adamantly opposed to stem-cell research, a majority of Catholics tell pollsters they support the idea.
"You think of the tremendous opportunity to improve the quality of life of tens of millions of people who have life-threatening diseases," Wendy Schmidt said yesterday. "It is ludicrous to shut down such a promising avenue." What her son doesn't understand, she said, is "'How can the president essentially be killing me? Because he's worried about the Catholic vote, I'm gonna die?' "I pray that Mr. Bush's own children or grandchildren are never diagnosed with this disease. If they were, you can bet he'd be singing a very different tune."
http://www.newsday.com/columnists/stories/friday/nd4667.htm