Paul is my son. Three years ago today he was a healthy college senior. My main worry was that he spent way too much time socializing. I was worried about his studies. But it was hard for me to push the point as he only rarely got a grade of less than an A in any course. He had already finished three years of calculus and I had not made it through one in my time in college. He was athletic. He loved basketball, laser tag and dancing. He had a wonderful laugh and a great singing voice. He loved playing the keyboard. In September of his sophomore year, he met a girl. She was a reporter on the college newspaper. She talked him into joining the newspaper staff. Four months later he was editor of the paper. His college has a huge campus. So big that there are shuttles to ferry students between classes. Paul hated the shuttles. They were too slow. He preferred to run. My genes, I had been a high school and college (scholarship) cross country and track athlete. I was so proud of him.
Because of all the running he was doing on the hard surfaces of concrete sidewalks and stairs, I was not surprised to learn he had a sore knee. I thought it might be a sprain. I recommended he get a knee support and ride the shuttles for a while until it got better. Icing the knee wouldn’t be a bad idea either. I gave him my best runner advice. Stay off the hard surfaces (especially concrete) as much as possible. Find ways to run between classes where there was mostly grass and dirt. I had had enough running injuries to be confident that my advice would get him back to normal again in a couple of weeks.
It didn’t. After several weeks of limited walking and no running, of lots of ice and wearing the knee support every where, he was not better. His knee was worse. It hurt more than before. It was becoming swollen and felt hot to the touch. His other knee hurt, too. Even his shoulders were sore. I asked him what the heck he was doing to injur so many joints. I think I was a bit annoyed. Now we would have to send him to an orthopedic doctor. He must have torn a tendon or two with all his dancing and wild goings on.
I made an appointment with the best orthopedic surgeon in the area near Paul’s college. He was the one who treated all the athletic injuries on the sports teams on the campus. The first available appointment was after Christmas vacation in early January.
Paul came back home for Christmas and was acting all wimpy about his knees. But like a good father I did not say much. After all what could I say to my son except when you live the wild life injuries happen. He would learn to be more careful in the future.
Paul went back to school in early January and a week or so later, he saw the orthopedic surgeon. I remember he called after the appointment to tell his mother and I what the doctor said. I fully expected he would need knee surgery. I waited for Paul to tell me that. I wondered where the surgery would be. The cost. Would it be that new arthroscopic type where he would just have band aids on the entrance wounds afterwards?
“Dad the doctor thinks I have inflammatory arthritis”
“What? What did you say? What the heck is inflammatory arthritis? I have never heard of that before.”
“It’s like RA. You know rheumatoid arthritis.”
“No way. There is no one in our family with that. The doctor must be wrong.”
“He took fluid from my knee to have it tested. The test results will come back in a few days. It was a huge needle. He kept poking it in different places. It really hurt.” Turned out that my son’s type of inflammatory arthritis was psoriatic not rheumatoid. His first symptoms were the swollen knees only later did he get the skin lesions.
The nightmare had begun.
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Why dear God can’t I wake up? Please, please make these last two and a half years go away. Take me in my sleep. Don’t let me see any more. If you are the compassionate caring God, I learned about in my youth, end this. End it now. I worshipped you every Sunday and many Wednesday nights as well. I spent years as a Sunday School, Bible School teacher and as director of large Christian scouting program. I served on church boards as a church leader. I participated in semi-annual work projects and special projects at church. My son was an active member of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship at college. Our family attended Bible believing and Bible preaching churches in every town we lived in. For nine years in Porterville, California we attended the church pastored by James Dobson’s college tennis partner (Rev.Wil Spaite). James Dobson himself came to our church and preached and taught. Surely our family has done enough to earn some heavenly credit, right? Then let me die first. Please dear God, let me die first. I do not want to see my son suffer any more. I do not want to see him die.
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Here is a partial list of why science and cures now comes last in America. Below are rules regulations and the people who are responsible for them that would rather my son suffer and die then be cured.
(1) Stupid time consuming FDA rules and procedures
(2) Costly clinical testing of each and every named autoimmune disease one at a time instead of all at once. Almost all autoimmune diseases are caused by similar immune dysfunctions. It is likely that if one or two underlying factors were reversed virtually all forms of autoimmune disease could be cured. Yet the FDA insists one autoimmune disease at a time in clinical trials.
(3) Modern medicine held hostage to ninteenth century nomenclature based solely on location of the affected part rather than twenty first century immune cell and genetic dysfunctions. Let's quit naming diseases by what they affect instead name them by what is the root cause—genetics, lack of effective Tregs, over aggressive T effectors, B memory cell dysfunctions, etc.
(4) The "elephant man" reaction to new autoimmune drug in England last year has slowed the tortise like progress of the FDA to slower and more frustrating than a snail race.
(5) Jesse Gelsinger. He was a hero not a victim. Would he want his death to have slowed cures causing the deaths of thousands.
(6) Vast gulf between researchers and practitioners and between researchers and clinicians. This is called the bench and bedside divide. Translational medicine is term used by the FDA for bringing research results (bench) to patients (bedside). FDA wants to speed up the process so they have put in place a program to do that but the program actually adds paperwork and slows down the process.
(7) Researchers charging ahead to make discoveries, to claim credit and patents but no follow up to bring discoveries to patients. The US invents the VCR but want to charge tens of thousands of dollars for each so the Japanese simplify and rework VCR and translated the technology into something costing $40. Suddenly everyone had a VCR. The problem in translational medicine today is that there is no Japan to take the animals cures and turn them into humand cures.
(8) Translational problems—translating discoveries into medicines
(9) Do no harm today means take no chances. Protect your ass first and foremost.
(10) Physician “career investment” must be protected to hell with sick patients
Today’s physicians refusing to write off label prescriptions which were routine thirty years ago.
(11) A regulatory mess, a truly impassable morass to qualify a patient for compassionate use
(12) Bush administration money spent for death not for life—billions a month to kill in Iraq. Any one month of the Bush off budget spending in Iraq could fund a cure for most autoimmune disease in less than a year.
(13) Six years lost in stem cell research that could lead to human cellular models of disease thanks to Bush and his little god version of intolerant christianity.
(14) No embryonic research.
(15) No fetal research.
(16) James Dobson, Jerry Falwell--What they say is so is more important than what is actually so according to them and their followers. End of science and science investigation. The end of rational debate based on best evidence. The end of evidence. Next we won’t need detectives. Just decide who did it ahead of time and convict them regardless. That is the Neocon way. It is the old Soviet style. The way the Cardasians (Star Trek---Deep Space Nine) decide ahead of time who is guilty and what the punishment is before the trial and evidence is looked at. Bush, the Neocons and the little god Christians favorite form of decision making. Decide what the conclusion is before looking at any evidence. Then fit the evidence to the decision throwing out any contrary ideas.
(17) Frank Luntz chief propagandist for the Cons. They pay him to cloth their lies in respectability. He can turn any horror into a catchy slogan.
(18) Grover Norquist and The Club for Growth,
(19) Paul Gigot the editor of the Wall Street Journal.
(20) Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdock and all those who work for them and swallow their integrity to write propaganda pieces rather than news stories and segments.
(21) RepubliCON members of Congress who are Cons first Americans last. They end their vacations and all rush to Washington on a weekend to prolong the torture of a woman who had a water balloon for a brain but cannot find time to fund cures for her or any one else in America.
(22) The budget of the FDA did not increase this year (2006). Same as last year HUGE amounts of basic and translational research will not be done for another year. Another year of suffering and death for ordinary Americans. Cures kept from us again.
(23) Lack of funds to bring the latest technologies to pre-eminent college research facilities.
(24) Bush administration federal rules and regulations that force research centers to build whole new laboratories with parallel facilities and equipment to do stem cell research. If even one test tube crosses over all forms of federal funding including student loans can be shut off to the university. These are regulations put in place to hamper if not to down right shut down all embryonic stem cell research. Cons do not have the stones to do it directly so as usual they take the sneaky back door way while claiming to actually want stem cell cures.
UPDATE: Paul survived to near death episodes in July of 2007. His autoimmune condition froze his ribcage so that he could not expand it and he nearly suffocated twice. My wife and I sat with him through the night, wondering which would be his last breath. We got a new doctor "out of our plan" so my wife's insurance only covers 70% of all Paul's bills. The FOR PROFIT health care company decides what are usual and customary charges then pays only 70% of those costs which amounts to less than 50% of the phyician's charges.
The new doctor however is competent unlike the three we went to that were "in" our plan. He knew ALL the medicines. He put Paul on a new DMARD and a biologic. Paul is moving more now. He is still alive more than two years after my wife and I thought we were watching him die. he no longer feels like he is suffocating.
But Only a trip to emergency and many shots of cortisone kept him breathing until we got him to a good "out of plan" doctor.
Now the only problem are the bills. Our last month's bill from our physician was over $10,000. This is AFTER we have met the deductible. This is after the insurance has covered part of the cost. The 10K is the uncovered part--the patient's responsibility. I can't wait until Paul hits his life time limit of care. Then they will pay nothing.
Thank you cons for stopping health care reform. Let's add that to your score of successes like the one you achieved when you stopped stem cell cures for ten years. Now you con cult members are stopping any chance ordianry hardworking Americans have to ever pay their insurance bills.
Monday, May 28, 2007
The Money behind the Right Wing Conspiracy
New York Times
May 29, 2005
Goals Reached, Donor on Right Closes Up Shop
By JASON DePARLE
WASHINGTON, May 28 - Without it, the Federalist Society might not exist, nor its network of 35,000 conservative lawyers. Economic analysis might hold less sway in American courts. The premier idea factories of the right, from the Hoover Institution to the Heritage Foundation, would have lost millions of dollars in core support. And some classics of the conservative canon would have lost their financier, including Allan Bloom's lament of academic decline and Charles Murray's attacks on welfare.
Part Medici, part venture capitalist, the John M. Olin Foundation has spent three decades financing the intellectual rise of the right and exciting the envy of the left. Now the foundation is closing its doors. In telling the organization to spend his money within a generation, John M. Olin, a Midwestern ammunition and chemical magnate, sought to maximize his fortune's influence and keep it from falling into hostile - that is, liberal - hands.
In the budget offices of the right, the loss of Olin, though long anticipated, is bringing a stab of anxiety, as total annual giving of up to $20 million disappears from think tanks, journals and academic aeries. Yet it is a measure of the foundation's success that the anxiety has not been greater. While a generation ago just three or four major foundations operated on the right, today's conservatism has no shortage of institutions, donors or brio.
At a recent farewell dinner in New York that drew a crowd of prominent thinkers and doers, James Piereson, the longtime director of Olin, recounted the 1970's threats that the foundation set out to address: economic decline, urban disorder and Soviet expansionism. By contrast, Mr. Piereson said, critics now say "the United States is too powerful" and its people "too proud."
"This," Mr. Piereson added wryly, "is an exchange that John Olin would have gladly accepted."
Feeling outmatched in the war of ideas, liberal groups have spent years studying conservative foundations the way Pepsi studies Coke, searching for trade secrets. They say that Olin and its allies have pushed an agenda that spread wealth at the top and insecurity below, and that left market excesses unchecked - and that they have done so with estimable skill.
"The right has done a marvelous job," said Rob Stein, a former official in the Clinton administration who has formed an organization, the Democracy Alliance, to develop rival machinery on the left. "They are strategic, coordinated, disciplined and well financed. And they're well within their rights in a democracy to have done what they've done."
Mr. Piereson says that one Olin secret is plain to see: its interest in abstract ideas, removed from day-to-day politics. With conservatives in power, he worries that foundations and donors will focus too heavily on "public policy sorts of things," like school choice or anti-tax campaigns; by contrast, Mr. Piereson spent millions on the Olin Center for Inquiry Into the Theory and Practice of Democracy at the University of Chicago, where a typical conference examined the legacy of Rousseau.
As a result, Mr. Piereson is spending his last months in office promoting a route to political influence - intellectual armament - as unlikely as it has been effective. "The ideas have to be tended to," Mr. Piereson said. "Only after that can you tend to the policies."
John M. Olin knew the value of ammunition. In 1892, the year he was born, his father started a mining explosives company in East Alton, Ill., that soon began making bullets. Together, they built a manufacturing behemoth that sold 15 billion rounds during World War II and went on to make cellophane, metals, rocket fuel, paper, pharmaceuticals and sporting goods. An avid sportsman, Mr. Olin bred horses, hunted and fished; according to a biography to be published by Encounter this fall, "A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America" by John J. Miller, he sent boxes of salmon to a favorite politician, Richard M. Nixon.
In 1969 when armed students took over a building at his alma mater, Cornell University, Mr. Olin was shaken. Four years later, past his 80th birthday, he began pouring time and money into the small foundation he created 20 years earlier, saying he wanted to preserve the free enterprise system that had made his own wealth possible.
Mr. Olin and his wife, Evelyn, gave the foundation about $145 million; riding two bull markets since his death in 1982, it has given out about $380 million. About $6 million is left and will be awarded before the doors of its office in New York close in November.
With William E. Simon, a former Treasury secretary, as its first president, the foundation quickly focused on intellectual elites. "The basic instincts of the American people were conservative, but the intellectuals are moving in an opposite direction," said Mr. Piereson, who joined the foundation in 1981 and became its director four years later. "Our job was to show the American people why they were right."
Over time, Olin gave more than $9 million each to the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, Washington institutions that fight for causes like lower taxes and less government regulation. Yet it also financed more esoteric pursuits like The New Criterion, a literary journal where typical fare is a long attack on the Modern Language Association, a society of English professors.
"We weren't just trying to defend capitalism," Mr. Piereson said, but to defend a broader free society "along lines that included religion, history, literature and the arts."
Mr. Piereson said he had few specific expectations when he helped a little-known political theorist, Allan Bloom, create the democracy center in Chicago. But after a few years of high-brow seminars, Mr. Bloom wrote "The Closing of the American Mind," which topped best-seller lists in 1987 and inspired the continuing assault on campus liberalism.
The foundation's staff was similarly surprised when a $25,000 grant to an obscure social scientist, Charles Murray, helped revolutionize the welfare debate. Conservatives had long attacked poor people as abusing welfare programs. Mr. Murray's 1984 book, "Losing Ground," attacked the programs as abusing the poor by diverting them from work and marriage. By equating cutting with caring, Mr. Murray helped conservatives lay claim to the mantle of compassion as they pushed tough new welfare laws.
Much of Olin's giving has centered on law schools, reflecting Mr. Piereson's belief that they disproportionately shape public life. A $20,000 grant in 1982 helped law students organize a conference, and one of the most influential legal groups of the 20th century emerged, the Federalist Society.
The society now has chapters at almost every law school, and a swarm of alumni in the Bush administration dedicated to what the group calls limited government and judicial restraint. "It's not clear whether we would have existed without Olin's support," said Eugene Meyer, the society's president.
Even more influential has been Olin's support of the law and economics movement, which has transformed legal thinking. Its supporters say that economic tools, like cost-benefit analysis, bring rationality to the law, while critics warn that the focus on economics can cheat notions like fairness that defy quantification.
Olin has spent $68 million on law and economics programs, including those at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of Chicago. "I saw it as a way into the law schools - I probably shouldn't confess that," Mr. Piereson said. "Economic analysis tends to have conservatizing effects."
The foundation has had its disappointments. Olin spent more than $500,000 each at Duke and the University of Pennsylvania for programs in law and economics that it discontinued, saying they had failed to have a sufficient impact. And not every donation has gone toward erudition.
A $5,000 grant helped the journalist David Brock write his 1993 book, "The Real Anita Hill," in which he elaborated on his incendiary charges that impugned the character of Ms. Hill, the critic of Justice Clarence Thomas. Breaking with the right, Mr. Brock later apologized.
Yet even Olin's ideological critics envy the foundation's record. "Their grant-making strategy has been much more intelligent and effective than what we typically see on the left," said Jeff Krehely of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a liberal group that monitors charitable spending.
One of Olin's distinctive qualities is its steadfastness; it has financed favored groups like the Federalist Society for more than 20 years. "They don't follow fads," Mr. Krehely said. "It shows they have clear goals."
Other major conservative donors include the Sarah Scaife Foundation in Pittsburgh, the Smith Richardson Foundation in Westport, Conn., and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee. Comparing them with an equal number of liberal foundations, including Ford and MacArthur, Mr. Piereson found that the right spent $100 million a year to the left's $1.2 billion. "You don't have to have a lot of money to drive the intellectual debate," Mr. Piereson said.
Although Olin is bowing out, the conservative movement is growing. There are conservative think tanks operating in 42 states; grass-roots organizers working on issues like tort reform and tax relief; and groups monitoring liberal journalists, professors, politicians and clerics.
"The great achievements of conservative philanthropy are just beginning," said Adam Meyerson, president of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a Washington group (and Olin grant recipient) that advises conservative donors.
Yet no group is poised to fill Olin's niche as a benefactor of big ideas. Hoping to encourage one, Mr. Meyerson organized the dinner in New York to celebrate Olin's achievements, prompting coverage in National Review, The New York Sun and The New York Observer. In the last year, Mr. Piereson has published essays in The Wall Street Journal and Commentary magazine, summoning donors to the "battle of ideas."
But ideas can be a tough sell. "It can take 20 years to have a serious impact," Mr. Meyerson said, and many donors want quicker success.
As for ideas, Mr. Piereson has a new one. He is hoping to start an initiative to counter liberal influence in academia. Liberal academics "don't like American capitalism, American culture, and they don't like American history - they see it as a history of oppression," he said. "There are some people who are prepared to spend large sums of money to address this problem."
May 29, 2005
Goals Reached, Donor on Right Closes Up Shop
By JASON DePARLE
WASHINGTON, May 28 - Without it, the Federalist Society might not exist, nor its network of 35,000 conservative lawyers. Economic analysis might hold less sway in American courts. The premier idea factories of the right, from the Hoover Institution to the Heritage Foundation, would have lost millions of dollars in core support. And some classics of the conservative canon would have lost their financier, including Allan Bloom's lament of academic decline and Charles Murray's attacks on welfare.
Part Medici, part venture capitalist, the John M. Olin Foundation has spent three decades financing the intellectual rise of the right and exciting the envy of the left. Now the foundation is closing its doors. In telling the organization to spend his money within a generation, John M. Olin, a Midwestern ammunition and chemical magnate, sought to maximize his fortune's influence and keep it from falling into hostile - that is, liberal - hands.
In the budget offices of the right, the loss of Olin, though long anticipated, is bringing a stab of anxiety, as total annual giving of up to $20 million disappears from think tanks, journals and academic aeries. Yet it is a measure of the foundation's success that the anxiety has not been greater. While a generation ago just three or four major foundations operated on the right, today's conservatism has no shortage of institutions, donors or brio.
At a recent farewell dinner in New York that drew a crowd of prominent thinkers and doers, James Piereson, the longtime director of Olin, recounted the 1970's threats that the foundation set out to address: economic decline, urban disorder and Soviet expansionism. By contrast, Mr. Piereson said, critics now say "the United States is too powerful" and its people "too proud."
"This," Mr. Piereson added wryly, "is an exchange that John Olin would have gladly accepted."
Feeling outmatched in the war of ideas, liberal groups have spent years studying conservative foundations the way Pepsi studies Coke, searching for trade secrets. They say that Olin and its allies have pushed an agenda that spread wealth at the top and insecurity below, and that left market excesses unchecked - and that they have done so with estimable skill.
"The right has done a marvelous job," said Rob Stein, a former official in the Clinton administration who has formed an organization, the Democracy Alliance, to develop rival machinery on the left. "They are strategic, coordinated, disciplined and well financed. And they're well within their rights in a democracy to have done what they've done."
Mr. Piereson says that one Olin secret is plain to see: its interest in abstract ideas, removed from day-to-day politics. With conservatives in power, he worries that foundations and donors will focus too heavily on "public policy sorts of things," like school choice or anti-tax campaigns; by contrast, Mr. Piereson spent millions on the Olin Center for Inquiry Into the Theory and Practice of Democracy at the University of Chicago, where a typical conference examined the legacy of Rousseau.
As a result, Mr. Piereson is spending his last months in office promoting a route to political influence - intellectual armament - as unlikely as it has been effective. "The ideas have to be tended to," Mr. Piereson said. "Only after that can you tend to the policies."
John M. Olin knew the value of ammunition. In 1892, the year he was born, his father started a mining explosives company in East Alton, Ill., that soon began making bullets. Together, they built a manufacturing behemoth that sold 15 billion rounds during World War II and went on to make cellophane, metals, rocket fuel, paper, pharmaceuticals and sporting goods. An avid sportsman, Mr. Olin bred horses, hunted and fished; according to a biography to be published by Encounter this fall, "A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America" by John J. Miller, he sent boxes of salmon to a favorite politician, Richard M. Nixon.
In 1969 when armed students took over a building at his alma mater, Cornell University, Mr. Olin was shaken. Four years later, past his 80th birthday, he began pouring time and money into the small foundation he created 20 years earlier, saying he wanted to preserve the free enterprise system that had made his own wealth possible.
Mr. Olin and his wife, Evelyn, gave the foundation about $145 million; riding two bull markets since his death in 1982, it has given out about $380 million. About $6 million is left and will be awarded before the doors of its office in New York close in November.
With William E. Simon, a former Treasury secretary, as its first president, the foundation quickly focused on intellectual elites. "The basic instincts of the American people were conservative, but the intellectuals are moving in an opposite direction," said Mr. Piereson, who joined the foundation in 1981 and became its director four years later. "Our job was to show the American people why they were right."
Over time, Olin gave more than $9 million each to the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, Washington institutions that fight for causes like lower taxes and less government regulation. Yet it also financed more esoteric pursuits like The New Criterion, a literary journal where typical fare is a long attack on the Modern Language Association, a society of English professors.
"We weren't just trying to defend capitalism," Mr. Piereson said, but to defend a broader free society "along lines that included religion, history, literature and the arts."
Mr. Piereson said he had few specific expectations when he helped a little-known political theorist, Allan Bloom, create the democracy center in Chicago. But after a few years of high-brow seminars, Mr. Bloom wrote "The Closing of the American Mind," which topped best-seller lists in 1987 and inspired the continuing assault on campus liberalism.
The foundation's staff was similarly surprised when a $25,000 grant to an obscure social scientist, Charles Murray, helped revolutionize the welfare debate. Conservatives had long attacked poor people as abusing welfare programs. Mr. Murray's 1984 book, "Losing Ground," attacked the programs as abusing the poor by diverting them from work and marriage. By equating cutting with caring, Mr. Murray helped conservatives lay claim to the mantle of compassion as they pushed tough new welfare laws.
Much of Olin's giving has centered on law schools, reflecting Mr. Piereson's belief that they disproportionately shape public life. A $20,000 grant in 1982 helped law students organize a conference, and one of the most influential legal groups of the 20th century emerged, the Federalist Society.
The society now has chapters at almost every law school, and a swarm of alumni in the Bush administration dedicated to what the group calls limited government and judicial restraint. "It's not clear whether we would have existed without Olin's support," said Eugene Meyer, the society's president.
Even more influential has been Olin's support of the law and economics movement, which has transformed legal thinking. Its supporters say that economic tools, like cost-benefit analysis, bring rationality to the law, while critics warn that the focus on economics can cheat notions like fairness that defy quantification.
Olin has spent $68 million on law and economics programs, including those at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of Chicago. "I saw it as a way into the law schools - I probably shouldn't confess that," Mr. Piereson said. "Economic analysis tends to have conservatizing effects."
The foundation has had its disappointments. Olin spent more than $500,000 each at Duke and the University of Pennsylvania for programs in law and economics that it discontinued, saying they had failed to have a sufficient impact. And not every donation has gone toward erudition.
A $5,000 grant helped the journalist David Brock write his 1993 book, "The Real Anita Hill," in which he elaborated on his incendiary charges that impugned the character of Ms. Hill, the critic of Justice Clarence Thomas. Breaking with the right, Mr. Brock later apologized.
Yet even Olin's ideological critics envy the foundation's record. "Their grant-making strategy has been much more intelligent and effective than what we typically see on the left," said Jeff Krehely of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a liberal group that monitors charitable spending.
One of Olin's distinctive qualities is its steadfastness; it has financed favored groups like the Federalist Society for more than 20 years. "They don't follow fads," Mr. Krehely said. "It shows they have clear goals."
Other major conservative donors include the Sarah Scaife Foundation in Pittsburgh, the Smith Richardson Foundation in Westport, Conn., and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee. Comparing them with an equal number of liberal foundations, including Ford and MacArthur, Mr. Piereson found that the right spent $100 million a year to the left's $1.2 billion. "You don't have to have a lot of money to drive the intellectual debate," Mr. Piereson said.
Although Olin is bowing out, the conservative movement is growing. There are conservative think tanks operating in 42 states; grass-roots organizers working on issues like tort reform and tax relief; and groups monitoring liberal journalists, professors, politicians and clerics.
"The great achievements of conservative philanthropy are just beginning," said Adam Meyerson, president of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a Washington group (and Olin grant recipient) that advises conservative donors.
Yet no group is poised to fill Olin's niche as a benefactor of big ideas. Hoping to encourage one, Mr. Meyerson organized the dinner in New York to celebrate Olin's achievements, prompting coverage in National Review, The New York Sun and The New York Observer. In the last year, Mr. Piereson has published essays in The Wall Street Journal and Commentary magazine, summoning donors to the "battle of ideas."
But ideas can be a tough sell. "It can take 20 years to have a serious impact," Mr. Meyerson said, and many donors want quicker success.
As for ideas, Mr. Piereson has a new one. He is hoping to start an initiative to counter liberal influence in academia. Liberal academics "don't like American capitalism, American culture, and they don't like American history - they see it as a history of oppression," he said. "There are some people who are prepared to spend large sums of money to address this problem."
Shame on Robert Goldberg
This letter was written regarding the problems with getting cures to patients. (Please support the Abagail Alliance. Robert Goldberg published an article about he problem on a biotecnology website. Allowing a right wing hit man to publish propaganda pieces cheapens and discredits people who are trying to change the FDA approval rules in ways to benefit patients.
Dear Biotechnology I. O.
I enjoy your site. Most article links are very informative. I enjoy reading unbiased current information in the biotech field.
However, you do a disservice to your readers and your site when you reference propaganda articles written by hired guns whose only agenda is the deception of the American public for the benefit of their masters who pay them so well.
Robert Goldberg is one such amoral, hired gun who you linked to in the article, “Streamlining drug approval” from Washington Times. He writes for virtually every propaganda organ in the deception quiver of the wealthy. His articles serve only to try to make more money for his masters by persuading Americans to believe something which is neither true nor in the best interest of ordinary Americans.
I agree with the premise of his article. There are huge problems with the FDA drug approval system. My youngest son is crippled and completely disabled from a rapidly progressing autoimmune disease that he had no sign of three years ago. His chances of living for five more years are very remote.
This horror has been compounded by the many different cures for autoimmune disease in laboratory animals that have been discovered in the last three years including a "vaccine" recently announced by The Weizmann Institute in Israel. Other cures have been announced by the Salk institute in San Diego, Jeffrey Bluestone at UCSF, the La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology and the Burnham Institute. But none of the revolutionary treatments or cures ever gets tried on humans. When I have contacted these institutions their answers are inevitably the same. They say a variation of the following, "We are a research institute. We do not do translational work. We do not do clinical trials. That work is up to someone else." I ask, “who is that someone else?” They have never have an answer for that question--just some vague someone, some place else will do it, they are sure.
Meanwhile my son suffers in pain and worsens daily. He can no longer walk unaided. He cannot pick up a fork. He cannot even talk as the joint holding his vocal cords is frozen.
There is a need for “Phase Zero” Clinical Trials of novel therapies and medications, using fully informed volunteers, without Institutional Review Board paperwork and hold up. Some patients would be hurt. Some will undoubtedly die. But the techniques and medications would get to millions of others years earlier. Those who were hurt and died would be heroes instead of anonymous victims of the relentless diseases they now suffer from. My son will die without a new therapy. His death will be pointless and without value. At least with “Phase Zero” clinical trials, if worst came to worst, he would have contributed to cures for others. I, too, have an autoimmune disease. I would happily take join any Phase Zero trial that might help my son.
If Robert Goldberg actually cared about real patients rather than his sponsors paycheck these are the kind of issues he would address.
He would rail against the intentionally difficult system of reporting adverse reactions put in place at the behest of big pharma using their financial might to bribe Congress to write the laws and regulations on reporting the way Big Pharma wants.
There absolutely are stupid bureaucratic delays for crucial medications. I absolutely agree on that point with Goldberg. But I come at it as a father of a patient not as paid writer. Below is an example of a ridiculous FDA delay:
Rituxan, an obvious autoimmune candidate medication, has taken a decade from initial FDA approval for Type B leukemias to approval for use against Rheumatoid Arthritis. A decade is an unconscionable delay!
Even now with its proven efficacy for RA, it has not been approved for the whole host of other autoimmune diseases with similar pathology to RA.
Obviously if it helps RA by killing off the rogue B cells that produce the maladapted antibodies that are attacking the joints, it would also work to kill the rogue B cells in psoriatic arthritis that attack tendons, the rogue B cells in MS that attack myelin sheaths around nerve cells. Virtually every one of the eighty or more autoimmune disease start with rogue B cells producing maladapted antibodies. Eliminate the rogue B cells and you eliminate the maladapted antibodies. Disease progression stops.
Yet the FDA requires each autoimmune disease to be tested separately. Approval for a new autoimmune disease comes only after hundreds of millions of dollars and years of waiting for each of these diseases. Why should we have to wait? Why doesn’t Goldberg care about this issue?
Insurance companies do not pay for off label uses, so millions are effectively denied Rituxan’s benefits. Does Goldberg bring up the issue of no coverage for effective uses of medications that are off label therefore not reimbursed? No, no one paid him to say it.
Rituxan is also “old technology”—a monoclonal that is part mouse instead of being a fully human antibody. New monoclonals are fully human.
Had Rituxan been approved a decade ago for autoimmune disease; a market for new technology, anti-B cell medications would have rapidly developed. Those new technology anti-B cell medications with far fewer side effects would be on the market now. Instead we will have to wait another five years for the newer monoclonals. Does Goldberg bring up this issue either? No, who’s paying him to say that? No one.
He writes for the Washington Times, the American Spectator and other completely biased propaganda papers whose sole purpose is deception and disinformation to confuse the American public. Please do not link to his articles any more. For goodness sake, he is a senior fellow at the fascist Manhattan Institute! Why not link to flat earth articles, moon landing deniers, and anti-evolution articles, too?
Your site is either scientific site or it isn’t. If you are going to reference propaganda pieces at least label them as such. Yes I saw the word ‘editorial.” And no that word is not sufficient. An editorial in JAMA or some other reputable medical journal is for the purpose of advancing science for the general good. That kind of editorial is a very different kind of writing from the propaganda pieces of Goldberg meant to deceive and hurt the common good for the benefit of those who pay him to write the propaganda. His was not an editorial, it was a paid for propaganda piece and should have been labeled as such.
darwindad@cox.net
Dear Biotechnology I. O.
I enjoy your site. Most article links are very informative. I enjoy reading unbiased current information in the biotech field.
However, you do a disservice to your readers and your site when you reference propaganda articles written by hired guns whose only agenda is the deception of the American public for the benefit of their masters who pay them so well.
Robert Goldberg is one such amoral, hired gun who you linked to in the article, “Streamlining drug approval” from Washington Times. He writes for virtually every propaganda organ in the deception quiver of the wealthy. His articles serve only to try to make more money for his masters by persuading Americans to believe something which is neither true nor in the best interest of ordinary Americans.
I agree with the premise of his article. There are huge problems with the FDA drug approval system. My youngest son is crippled and completely disabled from a rapidly progressing autoimmune disease that he had no sign of three years ago. His chances of living for five more years are very remote.
This horror has been compounded by the many different cures for autoimmune disease in laboratory animals that have been discovered in the last three years including a "vaccine" recently announced by The Weizmann Institute in Israel. Other cures have been announced by the Salk institute in San Diego, Jeffrey Bluestone at UCSF, the La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology and the Burnham Institute. But none of the revolutionary treatments or cures ever gets tried on humans. When I have contacted these institutions their answers are inevitably the same. They say a variation of the following, "We are a research institute. We do not do translational work. We do not do clinical trials. That work is up to someone else." I ask, “who is that someone else?” They have never have an answer for that question--just some vague someone, some place else will do it, they are sure.
Meanwhile my son suffers in pain and worsens daily. He can no longer walk unaided. He cannot pick up a fork. He cannot even talk as the joint holding his vocal cords is frozen.
There is a need for “Phase Zero” Clinical Trials of novel therapies and medications, using fully informed volunteers, without Institutional Review Board paperwork and hold up. Some patients would be hurt. Some will undoubtedly die. But the techniques and medications would get to millions of others years earlier. Those who were hurt and died would be heroes instead of anonymous victims of the relentless diseases they now suffer from. My son will die without a new therapy. His death will be pointless and without value. At least with “Phase Zero” clinical trials, if worst came to worst, he would have contributed to cures for others. I, too, have an autoimmune disease. I would happily take join any Phase Zero trial that might help my son.
If Robert Goldberg actually cared about real patients rather than his sponsors paycheck these are the kind of issues he would address.
He would rail against the intentionally difficult system of reporting adverse reactions put in place at the behest of big pharma using their financial might to bribe Congress to write the laws and regulations on reporting the way Big Pharma wants.
There absolutely are stupid bureaucratic delays for crucial medications. I absolutely agree on that point with Goldberg. But I come at it as a father of a patient not as paid writer. Below is an example of a ridiculous FDA delay:
Rituxan, an obvious autoimmune candidate medication, has taken a decade from initial FDA approval for Type B leukemias to approval for use against Rheumatoid Arthritis. A decade is an unconscionable delay!
Even now with its proven efficacy for RA, it has not been approved for the whole host of other autoimmune diseases with similar pathology to RA.
Obviously if it helps RA by killing off the rogue B cells that produce the maladapted antibodies that are attacking the joints, it would also work to kill the rogue B cells in psoriatic arthritis that attack tendons, the rogue B cells in MS that attack myelin sheaths around nerve cells. Virtually every one of the eighty or more autoimmune disease start with rogue B cells producing maladapted antibodies. Eliminate the rogue B cells and you eliminate the maladapted antibodies. Disease progression stops.
Yet the FDA requires each autoimmune disease to be tested separately. Approval for a new autoimmune disease comes only after hundreds of millions of dollars and years of waiting for each of these diseases. Why should we have to wait? Why doesn’t Goldberg care about this issue?
Insurance companies do not pay for off label uses, so millions are effectively denied Rituxan’s benefits. Does Goldberg bring up the issue of no coverage for effective uses of medications that are off label therefore not reimbursed? No, no one paid him to say it.
Rituxan is also “old technology”—a monoclonal that is part mouse instead of being a fully human antibody. New monoclonals are fully human.
Had Rituxan been approved a decade ago for autoimmune disease; a market for new technology, anti-B cell medications would have rapidly developed. Those new technology anti-B cell medications with far fewer side effects would be on the market now. Instead we will have to wait another five years for the newer monoclonals. Does Goldberg bring up this issue either? No, who’s paying him to say that? No one.
He writes for the Washington Times, the American Spectator and other completely biased propaganda papers whose sole purpose is deception and disinformation to confuse the American public. Please do not link to his articles any more. For goodness sake, he is a senior fellow at the fascist Manhattan Institute! Why not link to flat earth articles, moon landing deniers, and anti-evolution articles, too?
Your site is either scientific site or it isn’t. If you are going to reference propaganda pieces at least label them as such. Yes I saw the word ‘editorial.” And no that word is not sufficient. An editorial in JAMA or some other reputable medical journal is for the purpose of advancing science for the general good. That kind of editorial is a very different kind of writing from the propaganda pieces of Goldberg meant to deceive and hurt the common good for the benefit of those who pay him to write the propaganda. His was not an editorial, it was a paid for propaganda piece and should have been labeled as such.
darwindad@cox.net
Farmworkers abuse by "patriotic" Americans
Sarah Villicana is a reporter for the Porterville Recorder. After a virulently rascist letter to the editor was published in the paper she wrote a courageous response wondering if perhaps there should be limits to free speech.
I can assure you from first hand observation that the treatment of field workers in California's San Joaquin valley is akin to the treatment of serfs during the Middle Ages. It makes me ashamed that such acts of meanness are done by people who call themselves Americans.
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Reporter's Notebook: Is there such a thing as too much free speech?
By Sarah Villicana, The Porterville Recorder
svillicana@portervillerecorder.com.
In regards to your column entry, “Is there such a thing as too much free speech?” I say, Bravo! Good Job, Sarah! I am amazed by your temperate response. Had I seen the letter mine response would have been much more heated. Obviously the Porterville Recorder needs much better regulation of its standards for letters to the editor. No ethnic group should be singled out for slurs in any letter published by the Porterville Recorder. It degrades the reputation of the Recorder.
While I lived in Porterville I saw great abuses of farmworkers and great prejudice. I remember a very cold day in January when I was driving on the freeway. A huge shiny white new pickup passed me. In the cab was a white man dressed in a very warm leather coat with what looks like a lamb’s fur collar. The rest of the cab was empty. The windows were closed. Obviously the heat was cranked up high. In the back, uncovered pick up bed was a farmworker huddled in a tiny ball wearing only a thin blue denim jacket. The wind was roaring over him. The temperature was mid forties if that. The farmworker looked so incredibly cold.
I would not have put a dog in an open pickup bed at those temperatures. Yet the farmer driving at perhaps eighty miles an hour did not give one thought to inviting the worker inside the heated cab. That mental picture sums up what the kind of treatment of farmworkers I saw when I worked in the farming communities of Woodville and Saucelito--too many really heartless land owners. Farmworkers are people too.
Now that immigration reform will likely be passed and even fewer workers will make it to the Valley, I wonder how the rich landowners will treat farmworkers now. I can only imagine their desperation when there will not be enough farmworkers to get in all the crops. Maybe then they will value farmworkers as essential to the Valley economy.
The Porterville Recorder’s policies are too lenient.
I can assure you from first hand observation that the treatment of field workers in California's San Joaquin valley is akin to the treatment of serfs during the Middle Ages. It makes me ashamed that such acts of meanness are done by people who call themselves Americans.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Reporter's Notebook: Is there such a thing as too much free speech?
By Sarah Villicana, The Porterville Recorder
svillicana@portervillerecorder.com.
In regards to your column entry, “Is there such a thing as too much free speech?” I say, Bravo! Good Job, Sarah! I am amazed by your temperate response. Had I seen the letter mine response would have been much more heated. Obviously the Porterville Recorder needs much better regulation of its standards for letters to the editor. No ethnic group should be singled out for slurs in any letter published by the Porterville Recorder. It degrades the reputation of the Recorder.
While I lived in Porterville I saw great abuses of farmworkers and great prejudice. I remember a very cold day in January when I was driving on the freeway. A huge shiny white new pickup passed me. In the cab was a white man dressed in a very warm leather coat with what looks like a lamb’s fur collar. The rest of the cab was empty. The windows were closed. Obviously the heat was cranked up high. In the back, uncovered pick up bed was a farmworker huddled in a tiny ball wearing only a thin blue denim jacket. The wind was roaring over him. The temperature was mid forties if that. The farmworker looked so incredibly cold.
I would not have put a dog in an open pickup bed at those temperatures. Yet the farmer driving at perhaps eighty miles an hour did not give one thought to inviting the worker inside the heated cab. That mental picture sums up what the kind of treatment of farmworkers I saw when I worked in the farming communities of Woodville and Saucelito--too many really heartless land owners. Farmworkers are people too.
Now that immigration reform will likely be passed and even fewer workers will make it to the Valley, I wonder how the rich landowners will treat farmworkers now. I can only imagine their desperation when there will not be enough farmworkers to get in all the crops. Maybe then they will value farmworkers as essential to the Valley economy.
The Porterville Recorder’s policies are too lenient.
Pat Robetson, Listen up!
I wrote this letter to Pat Robertson about three years ago. I have heard nothing in reply.
___________________________________
When my wife and I were a young married couple in the late seventies, we contributed to your "ministry." We thought you were advancing the gospel message. After a couple of months of getting political messages in the literature you sent to our home, we stopped contributing. We were deeply disturbed about a religious leader, who received tax exempt status from our government, but instead of using that status for religious purposes used it to support political positions and particular politicians. You violated the spirit of the tax exemption that you were given.
After reading your autobiography that you sent to our home, we became even more concerned for your priorities. You said in that book that without consulting your wife you gave ALL your money and personal possessions away. You saved nothing back for your family. Hardly something Christ would advocate. Nor should you have written about any gifts you gave to God in a book. Christians give their gifts in secret. As Christ said, “You have had your reward before men. Do not expect one before God.”
Yes, it all worked out well for you. Today you are a billionaire. But giving away all means of support for your family without their knowledge, putting their lives in jeopardy is nothing Christ would ask of anyone. After reading that passage in your autobiography, my wife and I became concerned about the basis for your ministry. Is it Bible based or Robertson based? Who really is being glorified, Jesus or you? Do you care what happens to anyone else except yourself?
In the last week, you have called for the assassination of a twice democratically elected leader (Hugo Chavez). You run a "network" whose sole purpose seems to be to glorify the Robertson Family particularly you personally. You take tax exemptions from the government as a religious organization and then act as a political organ of the most extreme and anti-democratic right wing. For these three reasons, my wife and I demand our donated money back from your "ministry." We thought we gave to the Lord. But you took that money and made an empire of sycophants. You owe us $350 plus interest. My wife wants to send you a bill. Consider this email our bill.
I suggest you get on your knees and get right with God. Put your ego behind and take up the cause of Christ and his Great Commission. Christ’s message was one of compassion, not the Robertson one of retribution and ego gratification. You still have time to ask forgiveness and get right with God. I urge you to do that. Remember it is easier for a camel to crawl through the eye of the needle (gate) than it is for a rich egotistical man to get into heaven.
___________________________________
When my wife and I were a young married couple in the late seventies, we contributed to your "ministry." We thought you were advancing the gospel message. After a couple of months of getting political messages in the literature you sent to our home, we stopped contributing. We were deeply disturbed about a religious leader, who received tax exempt status from our government, but instead of using that status for religious purposes used it to support political positions and particular politicians. You violated the spirit of the tax exemption that you were given.
After reading your autobiography that you sent to our home, we became even more concerned for your priorities. You said in that book that without consulting your wife you gave ALL your money and personal possessions away. You saved nothing back for your family. Hardly something Christ would advocate. Nor should you have written about any gifts you gave to God in a book. Christians give their gifts in secret. As Christ said, “You have had your reward before men. Do not expect one before God.”
Yes, it all worked out well for you. Today you are a billionaire. But giving away all means of support for your family without their knowledge, putting their lives in jeopardy is nothing Christ would ask of anyone. After reading that passage in your autobiography, my wife and I became concerned about the basis for your ministry. Is it Bible based or Robertson based? Who really is being glorified, Jesus or you? Do you care what happens to anyone else except yourself?
In the last week, you have called for the assassination of a twice democratically elected leader (Hugo Chavez). You run a "network" whose sole purpose seems to be to glorify the Robertson Family particularly you personally. You take tax exemptions from the government as a religious organization and then act as a political organ of the most extreme and anti-democratic right wing. For these three reasons, my wife and I demand our donated money back from your "ministry." We thought we gave to the Lord. But you took that money and made an empire of sycophants. You owe us $350 plus interest. My wife wants to send you a bill. Consider this email our bill.
I suggest you get on your knees and get right with God. Put your ego behind and take up the cause of Christ and his Great Commission. Christ’s message was one of compassion, not the Robertson one of retribution and ego gratification. You still have time to ask forgiveness and get right with God. I urge you to do that. Remember it is easier for a camel to crawl through the eye of the needle (gate) than it is for a rich egotistical man to get into heaven.
Stem Cell Cures now!
The following is a letter I wrote to Congress in 2005. It had been less than two years since The Horror (psoriatic arthritis) first started in my son. In the letter I refer to a Korean researcher who has now been discredited. But others here in California are currently in the process of creating stem cell lines with the original genes replaced with genes from people with genetic conditions like my son. These cells will allow for the testing of new drugs OUTSIDE the body. It will be much safer. Thousands of drugs can be tested every week. Current techniques for testing drugs can take decades or centuries. We need embryonic stem cell reearch NOW!!!
I have a personal reason to support stem cell research—my son.
Less than two years ago he was an athletic college senior on track to graduate cum laude from UCSD when a sore knee turned out to be the first symptom of psoriatic arthritis. Today he is withered and crippled. His muscles are gone. His walking is gone. He cannot write, type or even use a computer mouse to play games. He can barely whisper a few words as his vocal cords are also affected.
The disbelief of the diagnosis of what we knew would be a sprained knee was followed by months of horror. We kept trying to make accommodations. We would go to his apartment help him clean wash clothes etc. Then we had to bring him home. He had to apply to a nearby college he could commute to and live with us. We put up hand rails in the shower. Chair by the door so he could sit to put his shoes on. My son, the champion laser tag player, could not stand to slide on his shoes.
Then we had to get the handicapped placard. Just applying is almost an admission of defeat. Then we got him a new car he could slide into better. Then expensive adjustments to the car seat to try to get him comfortable as his spine and neck became involved. Canes everywhere in our house. Weird to have canes. Weird to see him using canes. My son who could dance run jump. Now he was constantly exhausted. But it kept getting worse no matter what we tried to do to help him the inevitable and rapid progression kept continuing.
I did not know such a horror existed. Last December he was trying to type papers for his masters program when his fingers suddenly got swollen like sausages—terribly painful sausages. My wife and I finished typing his papers. We got an extension from his professors to finish. We bought Dragon naturally speaking and added RAM to his computer so he could talk to the computer instead of typing. Within two weeks the disease hit his vocal cords. He could not use his voice to activate the dragon program. Now he can do nothing but watch TV. Even then he must constantly shift chairs and put on ice pack after ice pack because he aches so much. He can no longer go to college. His very survival is at risk.
There is nothing more we can do. Just watch him suffer and then likely die. The next lovely aspect of this horror is destruction of internal organs. Soon his lungs, heart coronary arteries will be involved and then he will suffocate to death or die of a heart attack. Given the rapid progression of the disease so far I doubt he will be alive at this time five years from now.
This horror is happening to my son who was going to be the doctor, my son who should be bringing home the girl he will marry, my son who loved life, my wonderful child who had no enemies and hundreds of friends. He was always the one who saw problems and solved them. He did not ask what chore needed to be done. He saw. He helped.
He always had quick reactions. About ten years ago he saw his three year old cousin start to climb a heavy set of drawers by pulling them out. There were others adults in the room. But my son, then 14 years old leapt from his chair and grabbed the toppling chest of drawers saving his cousin. My beautiful son who saved his cousin is now in constant horrible, unrelenting pain. He has done nothing to deserve it.
But I did. I voted the straight Republican ticket in my youth. I twice voted for Bush the elder. I used to be a Sunday School teacher (15 years). I used to tithe. I ran a Christian scouting program (3 years). I supported James Dobson, a fellow Nazarene. In those times Republicans and Christianity stood for something good. Today those, who most loudly proclaim to be holy, to be acting as God wants them to, are guilty of great evil. God gave us the knowledge of how to find cures for diseases like my son has. Yet these evil monsters will not allow it.
I never could have imagined such a horror as my son has could possible exist let alone strike him down. As you sit reading this, you do not know when a similar horror could strike you or much worse someone you love. None of my son’s grandparents had autoimmune disease. One of my them died at 88. The others are living and 86, 87 and 89 years old. We had no clue this could hit us. No one is safe from genetic time bombs.
A few years ago scientist predicted that it would take a decade or more before cell lines created using the nucleus of disease causing cells would be developed. The Koreans did it in eighteen months. So much for predictions that embryonic stem cell research would not pay off for decades.
What the Koreans have done means a nucleus from one of my son’s cells could be developed into a cell line. Medicines to stop the disease could be developed using these cells OUTSIDE a human body, outside his body. No more experiments on imperfect animal disease models that only approximate human disease. No more experimenting on humans. With this technique hundreds perhaps thousands of possible disease modifying compounds could be tested at once using lab automation and “cell chips.”
This breakthrough is a quantum leap forward. If Gore had won the election this technique would have been developed in the USA and not in the year 2005 but probably in 2001 or 2002. After all, back then, the best stem cell scientists in the world were here in the United States. Cures would already be pouring out. Ill people from throughout the world would be coming here. My son might never have had to go through twenty months of hell.
My wife and I lost a baby. She had a miscarriage between the births of our two sons. That was twenty five years ago and it still saddens me today. But if there had been a way to donate some of that child’s cells to research, we would have done it. Suppose some of that child’s cells were alive and growing in labs or growing in people and providing cures. How wonderful! Knowing some part of our lost child was alive would provide me with great comfort. Surely those IVF parents must feel the same way about their embryos in storage. How much more wonderful if some part of their frozen embryos could help someone rather than just being tossed in a trash can! (And do not give me that “embryo adoption” deception! There are not nearly enough potential parents by a million fold to ever make a dent in the number of embryos stored; besides even the most careful implantations result in the death of some twenty or thirty “adopted” embryos for each successful implantation.)
I pray that you in Congress will make the right decision. Allow federal funding to go forward. Make the decision veto proof. Bush just does not understand. He has no empathy for other people’s suffering. He is wrong. He is horribly wrong. His position is simply evil. Come see my son. Send me your email address I will forward you before and after pictures of my son. See how truly evil the results of the Bush ban really are.
Sincerely darwindad
I have a personal reason to support stem cell research—my son.
Less than two years ago he was an athletic college senior on track to graduate cum laude from UCSD when a sore knee turned out to be the first symptom of psoriatic arthritis. Today he is withered and crippled. His muscles are gone. His walking is gone. He cannot write, type or even use a computer mouse to play games. He can barely whisper a few words as his vocal cords are also affected.
The disbelief of the diagnosis of what we knew would be a sprained knee was followed by months of horror. We kept trying to make accommodations. We would go to his apartment help him clean wash clothes etc. Then we had to bring him home. He had to apply to a nearby college he could commute to and live with us. We put up hand rails in the shower. Chair by the door so he could sit to put his shoes on. My son, the champion laser tag player, could not stand to slide on his shoes.
Then we had to get the handicapped placard. Just applying is almost an admission of defeat. Then we got him a new car he could slide into better. Then expensive adjustments to the car seat to try to get him comfortable as his spine and neck became involved. Canes everywhere in our house. Weird to have canes. Weird to see him using canes. My son who could dance run jump. Now he was constantly exhausted. But it kept getting worse no matter what we tried to do to help him the inevitable and rapid progression kept continuing.
I did not know such a horror existed. Last December he was trying to type papers for his masters program when his fingers suddenly got swollen like sausages—terribly painful sausages. My wife and I finished typing his papers. We got an extension from his professors to finish. We bought Dragon naturally speaking and added RAM to his computer so he could talk to the computer instead of typing. Within two weeks the disease hit his vocal cords. He could not use his voice to activate the dragon program. Now he can do nothing but watch TV. Even then he must constantly shift chairs and put on ice pack after ice pack because he aches so much. He can no longer go to college. His very survival is at risk.
There is nothing more we can do. Just watch him suffer and then likely die. The next lovely aspect of this horror is destruction of internal organs. Soon his lungs, heart coronary arteries will be involved and then he will suffocate to death or die of a heart attack. Given the rapid progression of the disease so far I doubt he will be alive at this time five years from now.
This horror is happening to my son who was going to be the doctor, my son who should be bringing home the girl he will marry, my son who loved life, my wonderful child who had no enemies and hundreds of friends. He was always the one who saw problems and solved them. He did not ask what chore needed to be done. He saw. He helped.
He always had quick reactions. About ten years ago he saw his three year old cousin start to climb a heavy set of drawers by pulling them out. There were others adults in the room. But my son, then 14 years old leapt from his chair and grabbed the toppling chest of drawers saving his cousin. My beautiful son who saved his cousin is now in constant horrible, unrelenting pain. He has done nothing to deserve it.
But I did. I voted the straight Republican ticket in my youth. I twice voted for Bush the elder. I used to be a Sunday School teacher (15 years). I used to tithe. I ran a Christian scouting program (3 years). I supported James Dobson, a fellow Nazarene. In those times Republicans and Christianity stood for something good. Today those, who most loudly proclaim to be holy, to be acting as God wants them to, are guilty of great evil. God gave us the knowledge of how to find cures for diseases like my son has. Yet these evil monsters will not allow it.
I never could have imagined such a horror as my son has could possible exist let alone strike him down. As you sit reading this, you do not know when a similar horror could strike you or much worse someone you love. None of my son’s grandparents had autoimmune disease. One of my them died at 88. The others are living and 86, 87 and 89 years old. We had no clue this could hit us. No one is safe from genetic time bombs.
A few years ago scientist predicted that it would take a decade or more before cell lines created using the nucleus of disease causing cells would be developed. The Koreans did it in eighteen months. So much for predictions that embryonic stem cell research would not pay off for decades.
What the Koreans have done means a nucleus from one of my son’s cells could be developed into a cell line. Medicines to stop the disease could be developed using these cells OUTSIDE a human body, outside his body. No more experiments on imperfect animal disease models that only approximate human disease. No more experimenting on humans. With this technique hundreds perhaps thousands of possible disease modifying compounds could be tested at once using lab automation and “cell chips.”
This breakthrough is a quantum leap forward. If Gore had won the election this technique would have been developed in the USA and not in the year 2005 but probably in 2001 or 2002. After all, back then, the best stem cell scientists in the world were here in the United States. Cures would already be pouring out. Ill people from throughout the world would be coming here. My son might never have had to go through twenty months of hell.
My wife and I lost a baby. She had a miscarriage between the births of our two sons. That was twenty five years ago and it still saddens me today. But if there had been a way to donate some of that child’s cells to research, we would have done it. Suppose some of that child’s cells were alive and growing in labs or growing in people and providing cures. How wonderful! Knowing some part of our lost child was alive would provide me with great comfort. Surely those IVF parents must feel the same way about their embryos in storage. How much more wonderful if some part of their frozen embryos could help someone rather than just being tossed in a trash can! (And do not give me that “embryo adoption” deception! There are not nearly enough potential parents by a million fold to ever make a dent in the number of embryos stored; besides even the most careful implantations result in the death of some twenty or thirty “adopted” embryos for each successful implantation.)
I pray that you in Congress will make the right decision. Allow federal funding to go forward. Make the decision veto proof. Bush just does not understand. He has no empathy for other people’s suffering. He is wrong. He is horribly wrong. His position is simply evil. Come see my son. Send me your email address I will forward you before and after pictures of my son. See how truly evil the results of the Bush ban really are.
Sincerely darwindad
Debating Duane Gish from the Institute of Creation Research
The following is a letter I wrote to the Christian Allance for Progress who ad a representative who spoke on a morning talk show in San Diego. The letter includs a description of my "debate" with Duane Gish of the Institute of Creation Research in Santee just east of San Diego.
I heard your representatives this morning on the Stacey Taylor show on AM 1360, KLSD. It was like a breath of fresh air. My wife and I grew up as committed and dedicated Christians. We served the Lord as Sunday School teachers, vacation Bible school, church board, and Christian scouting leaders. But we no longer attend church. We now cringe when someone says they are Christian.
In 1994 a Christian stealth group took over our local school district board here in Vista California. As Christians and teachers, we were torn by conflicting loyalties.
As the "Christians" on the school board became more and more outrageous. We joined with a group of community activitists, the teacher's association, the PTA and others to recall this group.
The divisions in our community are still raw. Each time a new school board election comes around we have another holy war in the community. The “little god” Christians keep coming back. Their campaigns know no limits on decency, truth, or good taste. They put out horrible and nasty untruthful hit pieces in the day or two before the election, the political signs of those who oppose the "Christian" candidates are taken down within hours of being put up. These people are a terrible witness.
They have not gotten a board majority in the five elections since. But they always manage to hang onto one or two seats. Because of their actions and rhetoric, there are a great number of people in our town who will never be interested in the church again.
I was a science teacher. I visited the Institute of Creation Research in Santee which is a fifty minutes drive away from Vista. I found a “museum” without a focus. Fossils on display with no provenance about where they were found or what they meant. They were mere props, not tools for learning.
I have also read many evolution and creation books. What I noticed was the scientists who wrote were universally more polite, more humble, more concerned with being honest than the creationist authors which were full of sarcasm and misrepresentations. Why are these self identified Christians not more Christ-like in their actions and words?
I became convinced that the 'little god" creationists were worshipping a different god than the big god of the Bible. The God of the Bible is the primary force behind the formation of an impossibly gigantic 15 billion year old universe. ICR's tiny god is only in charge of a tiny 6 thousand year old universe. Because time is size in space (speed of light being a constant) the god they worship rules a universe about the size of a beebee if the true size of the universe is represented by the size of the earth. Their tiny god is so puny compared to real true big god of the real universe.
I once debated Duane Gish the ICR's main 'debater' on National Public Radio. He started with facts or observations contradicting evolution or the age of the universe but with an attack on my faith. He claimed no one could be a genuine Christian and “believe” in evolution. I was so taken aback and momentarily silenced. Being a Christian was the core of my identity. How could I not be a Christian just because I knew that the Grand Canyon did not form in Noah's flood? (for one thing tracks of animals walk back into layers--hard to do if sediment was laid down in a few days). I was so startled by Gish's attack that it took a few minutes to respond. When I tried to answer him all he did was talk and talk and talk without leaving any time for a response from me. I could only respond by interrupting him. He would not stop even for a breath of air. I later learned that tactic was called the Gish gallop. The other side is never allowed to say anything so they cannot make any good points. It was kind of like what Fox "news" does with anyone who does agree with Bush.
How was it Christian not to want to find out the truth, not to discuss fairly? Only afterwards did I realize Gish was not after the truth or accuracy of how god created he was only after a win at any cost. No rules. Hardly a Christian way to win.
I would love to help out with science questions if you need help. I am a member of National Center for Science Education and was once a speaker for them. They are a group that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools. I was a science teacher and have never found any contradictions with a belief in Christ or his saving grace. So he used evolution to get us here great. So what? Who are we to attack his creative plan? Evolution is our explanation of his creative force--obvious. what is the problem?
Sincerely darwindad
I heard your representatives this morning on the Stacey Taylor show on AM 1360, KLSD. It was like a breath of fresh air. My wife and I grew up as committed and dedicated Christians. We served the Lord as Sunday School teachers, vacation Bible school, church board, and Christian scouting leaders. But we no longer attend church. We now cringe when someone says they are Christian.
In 1994 a Christian stealth group took over our local school district board here in Vista California. As Christians and teachers, we were torn by conflicting loyalties.
As the "Christians" on the school board became more and more outrageous. We joined with a group of community activitists, the teacher's association, the PTA and others to recall this group.
The divisions in our community are still raw. Each time a new school board election comes around we have another holy war in the community. The “little god” Christians keep coming back. Their campaigns know no limits on decency, truth, or good taste. They put out horrible and nasty untruthful hit pieces in the day or two before the election, the political signs of those who oppose the "Christian" candidates are taken down within hours of being put up. These people are a terrible witness.
They have not gotten a board majority in the five elections since. But they always manage to hang onto one or two seats. Because of their actions and rhetoric, there are a great number of people in our town who will never be interested in the church again.
I was a science teacher. I visited the Institute of Creation Research in Santee which is a fifty minutes drive away from Vista. I found a “museum” without a focus. Fossils on display with no provenance about where they were found or what they meant. They were mere props, not tools for learning.
I have also read many evolution and creation books. What I noticed was the scientists who wrote were universally more polite, more humble, more concerned with being honest than the creationist authors which were full of sarcasm and misrepresentations. Why are these self identified Christians not more Christ-like in their actions and words?
I became convinced that the 'little god" creationists were worshipping a different god than the big god of the Bible. The God of the Bible is the primary force behind the formation of an impossibly gigantic 15 billion year old universe. ICR's tiny god is only in charge of a tiny 6 thousand year old universe. Because time is size in space (speed of light being a constant) the god they worship rules a universe about the size of a beebee if the true size of the universe is represented by the size of the earth. Their tiny god is so puny compared to real true big god of the real universe.
I once debated Duane Gish the ICR's main 'debater' on National Public Radio. He started with facts or observations contradicting evolution or the age of the universe but with an attack on my faith. He claimed no one could be a genuine Christian and “believe” in evolution. I was so taken aback and momentarily silenced. Being a Christian was the core of my identity. How could I not be a Christian just because I knew that the Grand Canyon did not form in Noah's flood? (for one thing tracks of animals walk back into layers--hard to do if sediment was laid down in a few days). I was so startled by Gish's attack that it took a few minutes to respond. When I tried to answer him all he did was talk and talk and talk without leaving any time for a response from me. I could only respond by interrupting him. He would not stop even for a breath of air. I later learned that tactic was called the Gish gallop. The other side is never allowed to say anything so they cannot make any good points. It was kind of like what Fox "news" does with anyone who does agree with Bush.
How was it Christian not to want to find out the truth, not to discuss fairly? Only afterwards did I realize Gish was not after the truth or accuracy of how god created he was only after a win at any cost. No rules. Hardly a Christian way to win.
I would love to help out with science questions if you need help. I am a member of National Center for Science Education and was once a speaker for them. They are a group that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools. I was a science teacher and have never found any contradictions with a belief in Christ or his saving grace. So he used evolution to get us here great. So what? Who are we to attack his creative plan? Evolution is our explanation of his creative force--obvious. what is the problem?
Sincerely darwindad
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