Grandma Hart, for as long as I can remember, mixed up the names of her children and grandchildren. It was almost fun to get her upset just so she would have to sputter through the long list of relatives before she would simply stop and shake her finger and say, "YOU! C'mere!"
I can see her now, gray curls falling over her fingertips as she would scratch her forehead. "Now I was making some bread," she might whisper. "So I have to let it rest a while - was it an hour or two hours." It really didn't matter, though, because even Grandma's mistakes were better than anything you could find in the store.
Things would deteriorate. Everytime I talked to Grandma on the phone she was a bit more confused. Then when I went to visit she kept insisting that I answer to my father's name - and it broke her heart all over again when I had to tell her he had died over a decade earlier.
Then I got a panicked call from my cousin, "Grandma's gone," she said. "She took her little dog out for a walk three hours ago and hasn't come back yet." About an hour later, I got another call. It seems Grandma's dog had gotten off the leash and she followed it across the street. From that side of the street, she didn't know where she was so she started walking back to the home she'd made with Granddaddy for longer than anyone remembered. But that home was thirty-four miles outside of town. And it was a hundred and six that day. When the police found her, she answered to her name and asked "that nice po-liceman" if he could help her find a gardenhose for a drink of water and maybe call the pastor of the church to come get her because she had lost her car. "I just hope William isn't mad that dinner is going to be late tonight." In four hours, she had walked almost five miles and was on the verge of collapse. And she was worried about fixing dinner for her husband who had died eight years earlier.
On our honeymoon, I took my wife to meet Grandma because I knew she wouldn't be around much longer. She was in an assisted living center where they kept the doors locked so the Alzheimer's patients didn't stray. As my new wife and I sat and talked with my extended family, every ten minutes Grandma would look at me and scrunch up her eyebrows and say, "You look like a Hart. Do I know you?"
I'm told that in the last month or so, she forgot her oldest remaining son. He became, "that man with the kind eyes" and his daughters became "those nice young women with the young'uns". Fortunately, she remained sweet and kind and thoroughly "Grandma" until the day she died - she never suffered the personality shift that many late-stage Alzheimer's patients experience. But she had also lost all the memories that made Grandma the wonderful and sweet person that she had always been.
She passed away two days after my wife found out she was pregnant. That was about a month before we found out that my wife was carrying quadruplets and about six weeks before we lost one of them. The two that made the full journey into this world will never know those sweet hillbilly hands or taste her sweet 'tater pies. And there is no way that I would trade even a moment I've had with them for another decade of having Grandma.
But if I could somehow spare my boys from watching someone they love slowly disappear before their eyes, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'd take one of those blastomeres and say, "Make good use of this. It doesn't matter what it costs."
We have a choice today. We can take a legitimate step forward into the aspects of science that used to be reserved to the wonderful minds of people like Isaac Asimov. As Jonas Salk stepped forward to banish the fear of polio from our parent's generation, we can prepare the way for some unknown scientist to step forward and cure Alzheimers. Or Parkisons. Or diabetes. Or heart disease.
In general, I don't support pawning today's debts off on tomorrow's taxpayers. It is nothing short of robbing our offspring to make them pay off the bond issues for benefits they will never see. That isn't the case with the bond issue for stem cell research. They will fully reap whatever reward our actions sow.
Moreover, you can't build a research center on the cheap or in incremental steps. You have to invest in the best equipment and you have to build the whole thing. It is similar to taking out a mortgage to build a house - you don't take out one loan to build the living room and another to build the kitchen and yet another to build the bathroom. You take the step and do it, then you pay it off over time.
I also believe the research center will become a sparkplug for high-paying research and development jobs. In that respect, it will help pay for itself monetarily. More importantly to me, though, it will pay for itself in human terms thousands upon thousands of times for every inch of progress it makes.
George W. Bush says he believes in up-or-down votes. He proclaimed it shortly after his first inaugural, and included that belief in his 2005 State of the Union address, when he demanded that “every judicial nominee deserves an up-or-down vote.” A one-vote majority, says the President, should decide nominations and issues. He constantly talked about up-or-down votes in the Senate for the nomination of John Bolton as ambassador to the U.N., for bills to ban gay marriages, to make it illegal to burn the flag, and almost every bill his administration proposed. His words were echoed by the Congressional leadership and by the evangelical fundamental Christian base. He disagrees with Senate rules, which require 60 votes to override a filibuster. The reason President Bush believes in the “up-or-down” theory of governance is because for most of his Administration he has had a Republican Congress willing to do whatever it takes to advance a neoconservative political and social agenda. Since President Bush believes in one-vote majorities, it shouldn’t have been a problem for him to accept a 238–194 vote in the House and a 63–37 vote in the Senate to allow medical researchers to use stem cells from embryos, with their donors’ consent, that would have been discarded by fertility clinics. About 400,000 frozen embryos are in clinics; a few will be “adopted” by mothers who have them implanted in their uteruses; most embryos will be thrown away. Embryonic stem cells are the basic building blocks of life, cells that will develop into any cell in the body, and are the key to learning more about life itself. Stem cell research could lead to cures for Parkinson’s Disease, diabetes, numerous cancers, spinal cord injuries, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s. Nancy Reagan, whose husband’s last years were spent in the fog of Alzheimer’s, is a strong proponent of stem cell research. Almost seven months after his first inauguration, President Bush declared that the federal government would fund research only on stem cell lines that had already been developed, and not for any new ones. He equated the medical use of stem cells with murder, and threatened to veto any new legislation to expand stem cell research. His veto threats had worked on 141 other bills over a five and a half year period, as the Republican-controlled Congress meekly revised bills or eliminated them. This time, Congress—faced by the political reality that about 70 percent of Americans supported expanded stem cell research—didn’t buckle. Fifty House Republicans broke from the White House legislative controls; in the Senate, nineteen Republicans and all but one Democrat voted for the bill. The President renewed his veto threat. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) had asked the President, ”not to make the first veto of your presidency one that turns America backward on the party of scientific progress and limits the promise of medical miracles for generations to come.” Bill Frist—heart surgeon, Senate majority leader, and one of the most active voices in pushing the Bush–Cheney agenda—also opposed the veto. “Given the potential of this research and the limitations of the existing lines eligible for federally funded research, I think additional lines should be made available,” Dr. Frist said. But the president did veto the bill, and neither the House nor the Senate had the two-thirds majority necessary to override the veto. The President’s veto, said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is a “shameful display of cruelty, hypocrisy, and ignorance.” Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) said he thought the President was “captured by his own ideology and taking his ideology to an extreme.” Research, said Jim Langevin (D-R.I.) “will now continue in the private sector with insufficient funding and a lack of government oversight, all while millions of people wait for cures to devastating diseases. President Bush said in April 2002, “We have a moral imperative to protect the sanctity of life,” and continued to throw “sanctity of life” in almost every speech or comment about stem cell research. At the time he explained his veto, he declared the bill—approved by significantly more than an “up-or-down” vote—“crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect.” If the President honestly believed in a “moral boundary” and the “sanctity of life,” he would not have exploited a couple of dozen “snowflake babies”—children born from implanted embryos—by using them as props in the East Room when he explained why he vetoed the bill. If George W. Bush understood moral boundaries and the sanctity of life, he would not have lied about the non-existent ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda or the weapons of mass destruction he claimed were in Iraq in order to launch an invasion that has cost more than 2,500 American lives and caused injuries, many life-threatening, to another 18,000, in addition to 50,000–70,000 civilian deaths. He would not have decided that the Geneva Accords didn’t apply to thousands of prisoners that his Administration confined in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and other prisons. If he had any kind of a “moral compass,” he would have allowed prisoners to have due process, to be treated humanely, and not be subjected to “renditions,” the transfer to secret prisons in countries that use torture. If this former non-combatant National Guard officer had any concern for humanity, he would not have ordered severe cuts in combat pay and family benefits for active duty military, proposed a $1.3 billion cut in veterans’ benefits, and an increase in health care costs, while also pushing for massive tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent of Americans. If he believed in a moral administration, he would not have allowed Halliburton, the financial empire once run by Dick Cheney, to continue to get several multi-million dollar no-bid contracts in New Orleans and Iraq after being exposed for price gouging and fraudulent business practices. If George W. Bush understood the meaning of the “sanctity of life,” he would not have spent several minutes at a photo-op in Florida where he read “My Pet Goat” to children after being notified that the first plane had hit the Twin Towers. He would not have been embarrassingly slow and seemingly unconcerned to respond following the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake/tsunami in Southeast Asia or after Hurricane Katrina hit America’s Gulf Coast. He would not have disregarded the ubiquitous warnings from the scientific community about global warming and the multitudinous pleas to preserve and defend the environment and all of its life. He would not have diverted funds for disaster relief, and cut back on health and welfare needs. He would not have placed political cronies into senior administrative positions in the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and then cut that agency’s funding for disaster response. If he believed in “morals,” he would have cut all ties with his good buddy, “Kenny Boy” Lay, whose company cheated thousands of employees out of their pensions, while the executives were living in luxury. If the President of the United States was concerned about “morals” and the “sanctity of life,” he would have condemned hunting and the gun lobby that was one of the primary contributors to his political campaigns. He would have condemned the spurious and vicious attacks upon Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the 2000 primary contest, and the Swift Boat attacks upon Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in the 2004 general election. There is a lot that George W. Bush, who campaigned on promises to bring morality to the White House, could do to prove he is a moral leader, one who believes in the sanctity of life. But, his record, not his rhetoric, shows otherwise.
[Walter Brasch’s current books are America’s Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Government’s Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights and ‘Unacceptable’: The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina. Both are available through amazon.com and other on-line sources. You may contact Dr. Brasch at brasch@bloomu.edu]
This is part two in an ongoing series of debates between Tom Kean Jr and Tom Kean Jr. Today, they debate the controversial issue of stem cell research.
Last November, Tom Kean Jr was asked his position on embryonic stem cell research and was indecisive, saying only:
This is a very emotionally charged issue; clearly it needs to be given a lot of thought.
A month later he had made up his mind. Tom Kean Jr, who sat on the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, voted in favor of a measure which would provide $350 million in funding for stem cell research facilities. His position was unmistakably clear:
Asked if he now favors embryonic stem cell research, Kean added simply:
"Yes."
On a recent visit to Israel, he again expressed his support for the research and even talked about the difficulties preventing the research from moving forward:
Kean, visiting Hadassah at the culmination of a weeklong trip to Israel, told hospital officials that he supports such research and reported about problems obtaining approval for state initiatives in New Jersey.
It's likely that he was referring to those Senators in his own party who vote against measures to fund stem cell research facilities. Senators such as Tom Kean Jr, who yesterday voted against $250 million in funding for stem cell research facilities:
All 10 no votes yesterday came from Republicans, including Sen. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Union), a U.S. Senate candidate.
This debate will probably continue for months, but one wonders if they'll be able to find a middle ground. With Tom Kean Jr supporting $350 million in funding for stem cell research facilities, and Tom Kean Jr's opposition to a smaller plan providing only $250 million in funds, it will be an interesting debate to watch. And that's what politics is all about: two sides, with seemingly irreconcilable positions, pandering there way to a solution. Stay tuned.
Corzine's approval has dropped to 35%-42% this month, compared to a favorable 43%-21% approval rating last month. Voters aren't happy about the budget, though 87% concede that Corzine inherited the state's budget problems. Which leads to the obvious question: who the HECK are the other 13%? They think he created it? In three short months? That requires an intellect rivaled only by garden tools.
Across party lines, voters prefer to have state taxes raised rather than local taxes by a margin of 65%-19%. But 60% say that the penny sales tax hike is not needed, and by 54%-39%, voters want a 10% increase in their property tax rebates while 86% say that state aid to school districts should stay the same (50%) or increase (36%). Quinnipiac poll assistant director Clay Richards noted that "voters take the seemingly contradictory position of backing a hike in state taxes to avoid the almost inevitable property tax hike that would occur as a result of Corzine holding the line on aid to public schools and local governments.� Yep - sharp as a sack of wet mice.
An interesting finding in the poll is that voters support stem cell research by an overwhelming 73%-15% - even Republicans support it 61%-27% and by a 15 point margin, voters support spending upto $250 million to fund the research in the state. Only fundamentalist crazies would choose to save a petri dish of cells over life-saving medical advances. If there were ever a no-brainer wedge issue, this is it. Politicians shouldn't be afraid to expose the narrow and selfish ideology of the John Ginty's and "Right to Life"ers of the state.
