Thread: House fails to override stem cell veto

Actors, athletes to be in stem-cell ad
By JIM SALTER, Associated Press Writer
Wed Oct 25, 12:33 PM ET

ST. LOUIS - Days after actor Michael J. Fox appeared in a TV ad urging Missouri voters to support stem cell research, opponents will unveil their own commercial during the World Series Wednesday night.

The Cardinals' starting pitcher for Game 4, Jeff Suppan, is among several celebrities who appear in the minute-long ad. Others include Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner, Kansas City Royals player Mike Sweeney and two actors — Patricia Heaton of TV's "Everybody Loves Raymond" and Jim Caviezel, who portrayed Jesus in "The Passion of the Christ."

"Amendment 2 claims it bans human cloning, but in the 2,000 words you don't read, it makes cloning a constitutional right," Suppan says in the commercial. "Don't be deceived."

Amendment 2 would provide constitutional protections for embryonic stem cell research in Missouri. The 30-second spot featuring Fox, 45, who sways uncontrollably in the ad due to his Parkinson's disease, is actually a commercial for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Claire McCaskill.

But the Senate race and stem cell issue are intertwined — McCaskill's Republican opponent, Sen. Jim Talent, opposes the stem cell measure.

Fox also has lent his celebrity to Democrats Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, running for the Senate in Maryland, and Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, who is seeking re-election. Both politicians also back stem cell research.

"They say all politics is local, but it's not always the case," Fox says in the ad that began airing Saturday during Game 1 of the World Series. "What you do in Missouri matters to millions of Americans — Americans like me."

The Fox ad has triggered a backlash, with some criticizing it as exploitive. Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh claimed Fox was "either off his medication or acting," though he later apologized.

Dr. John Boockvar, a neurosurgeon and assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical Center at New York's Presbyterian Hospital, called Limbaugh's claim "ludicrous." Boockvar said those with Parkinson's have "on" and "off" spells.

"If there is one single disease that has the highest potential for benefit from stem cell research," Boockvar said Tuesday, "it's Parkinson's."

The Missouri ad opposing Amendment 2 was finished Tuesday and was immediately available on the Internet. Missourians Against Human Cloning spokeswoman Cathy Ruse said the ad was already in the works, "but we sped up production after the Michael J. Fox ad came out.

"That ad claims opponents want to criminalize research and prevent the expansion of stem cell research. Those claims are just false and misleading," Ruse said. "Our gripe with Amendment 2 is it creates a right to do human cloning and it creates the right to human egg trafficking for cloning research."

Connie Farrow, a spokeswoman for Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, a supporter of the amendment, called the ad "a pathetic attempt to distort the facts and mislead voters."

"To believe the claims made in their ad you'd have to believe that over 100 nonprofit patient and medical organizations, including the Missouri State Medical Association, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the Muscular Dystrophy Association, just to name a few, are conspiring to mislead voters," Farrow said. "And that defies commonsense."

Celebrities have a long history of supporting political candidates. But there's no question that Fox, who campaigned John Kerry in the 2004 presidential race, is uniquely suited as a spokesman for stem cell research.

Fox, who starred on TV's "Family Ties" and "Spin City" plus the "Back to the Future" films, shakes and rocks as he directly addresses the camera, the effects of his disease clearly apparent.

"The reason that he's powerful is that he's comparatively young," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director for the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. "As a result, a lot of people in that age range can look at him and say, `If that can happen to him, it can happen to me.'"

Jamieson noted that the stem cell issue has the potential to be an advantage to Democrats in the November elections since polls have shown the majority of Americans favor some form of stem cell research. Critics say it requires the destruction of a human embryo.

The risk, Jamieson added, is that the ads could appear as using Fox's hopes for a cure for political gain, as some claimed was the case when the paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve lobbied for stem cell research before his death in 2004.

Parkinson's disease is a chronic, progressive disorder of the central nervous system that leaves patients increasingly unable to control their movements.

Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1991 and revealed his condition publicly in 1998. In 2000, he quit full-time acting because of his symptoms and founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, which has raised millions of dollars.

He has since acted sporadically in smaller roles, such as in a several-episode guest appearance earlier this year on ABC's "Boston Legal," playing a business tycoon with cancer.

For that role and others, Fox generally has sought to control his movements, though his illness was evident. He told The Associated Press in January that one long scene was physically taxing and that because of Parkinson's disease, he "can't show up with a game plan."

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On the Net:

http://www.michaeljfox.org/

Parkinson's Disease Foundation: http://www.pdf.org/

Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures: http://www.missouricures.com

Missouri Right to Life: http://www.missourilife.org

___

AP entertainment writer Jake Coyle in New York contributed to this story.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061025/...ampaign_ads_24

link

The Unconscionable Claims of Michael J. Fox
October 25th, 2006

The popular and appealing actor Michael J. Fox has taken to the airwaves in Senate battleground states Missouri, Maryland, and New Jersey with a highly misleading ad urging defeat of Republican Senatorial candidates opposing the use of taxpayer dollars to fund new embryonic stem cell line research. He states,

“Stem cell research offers hope to millions of Americans with diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s…. But George Bush and Michael Steele would put limits on the most promising stem cell research.”

Mr. Fox and his ads’ sponsors are guilty of conflating embryonic stem cell research, which the GOP candidates and many Americans oppose for destroying a human life in the name of curing other people’s diseases, with stem cell research in general, which includes adult stem cell research and umbilical cord blood stem cell research.

The only limits in question are on federal funding of new embryonic stem cell lines, requiring the sacrifice of new embryos. Private and state-funded research (California voters are spending six billion dollars borrowing money to fund this) is ongoing. The implicit claim that research based on new embryos is “the most promising” is absurd, completely unsupported by the scientific literature, and an insult to voters, based as it is on the assumption that they are incapable of understanding the issue. Too stupid to tell the difference, is the elitist assumption underlying this campaign.

Flim-flam is a charitable description. Why would federally-funded research be more promising than state- and privately-funded research? And on what possible basis can the claim be made that embryonic stem cell research is more promising than adult stem cell research?

The plain fact is that embryonic stem cell research is proving to be a bust. There are currently 72 therapies showing human benefits using adult stem cells and zero using embryonic stem cells. Scientifically-minded readers can review this medical journal article on the status of adult stem cell research. Adult stem cell therapies are already being advertised and promoted while no such treatments are even remotely in prospect for embryonic stem cell research.

CBS Gives Fox Platform to React to Limbaugh's 'Ugly' Criticism,
Skips Fox's Distortions
Brent Baker
October 26, 2006

http://newsbusters.org/taxonomy/term/84

Ignoring the inaccuracies in Michael J. Fox's TV ads against some Republican Senate candidates, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric gave him a lengthy forum -- more than eight minutes -- to react to Rush Limbaugh's suggestion his swaying in the ads was exaggerated beyond the real impact of Parkinson's disease and to advocate for federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. With video of Fox behind her, Couric portrayed Limbaugh as the aggressor: “The battle over embryonic stem cell research turns ugly, and he is a target.”

Though Fox's ads denounce Republicans and insidiously suggest they are against curing his disease, Couric never challenged Fox on the false charges he made in the ads which injected Fox into partisan politics. She never even played those portions, instead only showed this positive line from one of the ads: "In Missouri, you can elect Claire McCaskill, who shares my hope for cures." In that ad against Missouri Republican Senator Jim Talent, Fox distorted Talent's opposition to cloning into how "Talent even wanted to criminalize the science that gives us the chance for hope."

In his ad for Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin, Fox alleged that Republican candidate Michael Steele “would put limits on the most promising stem cell research,” meaning embryonic. But embryonic has not shown promise and there's lots of research money going into it.

Couric noted, “in the spirit of full disclosure,” that “my dad has Parkinson's disease” and that “in the past I've made contributions for Parkinson's research through Michael J. Fox's foundation." But, she didn't note if she will give equal time soon to someone with a contrary view to Fox's on the desirability of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Misleading measure may launch U.S. cloning
By Robert D. Novak
Townhall.com

A new video available on YouTube marks a late attempt by pro-life forces to avert serious defeat in Missouri Nov. 7, with national implications. Cathy Ruse, speaking for
Missourians Against Human Cloning, declares: "Amendment 2 is a fraud. It is an attempt to trick Missourians into approving -- in their Constitution -- human cloning, the right of biotech firms to do human cloning in Missouri -- something Missourians oppose by an overwhelming majority." But Amendment 2 is identified for many Missouri voters by the language at the beginning of the five-page, 2,000-word
ballot initiative: "No person may clone or attempt to clone a human being." That explains why polls have shown a substantial margin of support for the constitutional amendment, also backed by key Republican politicians and business interests. It seems to offer the best of all worlds: government support of stem cell research without fear of cloning.

The problem is that the proposal so narrowly defines cloning as to open the door in Missouri to any cloning procedure that takes place outside the womb. If this is approved by a state that historically is a barometer of national trends and is considered a pro-life stronghold, it will be a national model for breaking popular resistance to what the scientists and biotech companies want.

A campaign costing an estimated $20 million has helped build a substantial lead for the amendment. A September poll by the Republican firm McLaughlin & Associates shows a 59 percent to 31 percent advantage. Democrats appear to have no doubt, favoring it 75 to 22, with only 3 percent undecided. But Republicans are split, 40 percent in support and 45 against, with 15 percent undecided.

Big Republican names -- former Sen. John Danforth, Gov. Matt Blunt and party contributor Sam Fox -- support the amendment. The $2 billion-endowed Stowers Institute in Kansas City, funded by GOP benefactors, spearheads the campaign.

That establishment Republican support for Amendment 2 has created a difficult situation for first-term GOP Sen. Jim Talent, engaged in a difficult re-election campaign. I reported Talent's "defection from the anti-cloning ranks" in February when he took his name off a Senate bill to ban cloning on grounds it might hamper acceptable scientific research.

Talent at that time was taking no position on Amendment 2, but he has since come out against it. In a recent debate with the Democratic Senate candidate, state Auditor Claire McCaskill, on NBC's "Meet the Press," Talent said the proposal "would create ... an unqualified constitutional right to clone the earliest stages of human life. " But he hastened to add he is not against stem cell research.

McCaskill sought to cast the debate in terms of whether the candidates are for or against the medical miracles that can be achieved through stem cell research. She proclaimed "I come down on the side of hope, hope of cures and supporting science." But she put this in the framework of the constitutional amendment that, she said, "strictly prohibits human cloning."

This confrontation on what is in the ballot proposition is enough to confuse voters. Amendment 2 bans only cloning that involves planting an embryo within the womb. It specifically prohibits government from interfering with somatic cell nuclear transfer, which involves replacing the nucleus of a human egg outside the womb -- the cloning procedure used to produce Dolly the sheep.

Unequivocally, the proposal tries to keep politicians from interfering with its approved cloning process: "[N]o state or local government body or official shall eliminate, reduce, deny or withhold any public funds provided or eligible to be provided to a person that lawfully conducts stem cell research or provides stem cell therapies and cures."

This language, contends the YouTube video, "provides biotech firms a blank check for taxpayer dollars to support unethical and unproven research that Missourians oppose."

If government-approved cloning can be sold to the barometer pro-life state of Missouri, it will show up next in other states with major research facilities.

Hollywood hatred

Don Murphy is the producer of Natural Born Killers, Apt Pupil, Double Dragon, and The Transformers movie. He was the former business partner of unhinged, trash-talking, blackface-endorsing left-wing blogger, Jane Hamsher.

These people can't express themselves without sinking into the gutter. Here's Murphy's response to pro-life actors Patricia Heaton and Jim Cavaziel, posted on his website message board (pardon the language): http://www.d13satellite.com/donmurph...threadid=15186

Wimps or Pussies- You decide

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nguJQ_dRPXw&NR

Not only do these retards run an ad that is morally and logically unsound, and MOCK Michael J Fox for having a disease, they have set it so that comments must be approved by them. Anything they don't like, doesn't get approved. Pure lameness. Are they wimps or pussies?

This is a good opportunity to state that Patricia Heaton is a worthless *****. When Bryan Singer and I were doing APT PUPIL, we made the mistake of offering her the role of the mother. It was a small role, and her career was nothing at the time. She didn't want to do it. People pass all the time, so fine. She was offended by the role. Okay, fine, **** you, be offended *****. But no - the worthless ***** wrote a letter to Sherry Lansing the head of the studio complaining that the film was evil and would destroy children's minds. She was ignored and mocked, of course, but can you believe this worthless human **** would have liked to STOP a movie because it offended her lame ***** sensibilities?

I'd vote yes for experimenting on Patricia Heaton cells.

As for Cavaziel, have you seen him in anything lately? Thought so.

The name of Murphy's production company, appropriately enough, is Angry Films.

Cloning? What is this Star Wars?