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Ralph Peters
Latest

Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World
Ralph Peters

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Julia Gorin

Clintonisms
by Julia Gorin

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Wounded Warrior
Please Help Those
Who Protect Us

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Burt Prelutsky

The Secret of Their
Success
by Burt Prelutsky
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Burt Prelutsky

Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco
by Burt Prelutsky
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Embryonic stem cells have already helped at least one person — Missouri Senate candidate Claire McCaskill, who made medical history when she won a seat in the Senate last month, thanks to the embryonic-stem-cell campaign commercial that Michael J. Fox did to endorse her.

Indeed, last month's sweeping Democratic victory could spell a victory for embryonic stem cell research as well. It's especially important because Fox apparently has decided that having Parkinson's Disease isn't enough for him, and that he also needs the brain tumor that embryonic stem cells create.

Recall a study published in the journal Neurology in 1996, in which a Parkinson's patient in China was implanted with embryonic and fetal stem cells. The subject's brain grew bone, skin, and hair — essentially a Siamese twin — killing the man.

I understand Democrats are for euthanasia, but there's got to be an easier way. A gun would be quick and less painful, but — sure enough — they're against those, preferring the drawn-out route instead.

We should have seen the warning signs when instead of just injecting Terri Schiavo with something, they wanted her to starve and thirst for three weeks until her swollen tongue protruded like rotting meat, her skin cracked, lips and nose bled as she heaved, vomited, had seizures, and gasped for air.

Stem cells from aborted fetuses were also once thought to be a promising avenue for treating neurological disorders. But in 2001 the New England Journal of Medicine reported on a U.S. study in which patients implanted with fetal stem cells started to writhe and twist about, jerking their heads and flinging their arms, chewing constantly, flexing and distending their wrists, and moving their fingers up and down. One subject reacted so negatively that he now needed a feeding tube (and we know where that leads). As one of the study's sponsors, Dr. Gerald Fischbach, put it: The surgery "is not the final solution that people would have hoped."

There you have it in their own words: They're working toward a Final Solution with human experimentation.

SLATE writer Michael Kinsley, who also suffers from Parkinson's, likewise has been making a plea for embryonic stem cell research — despite the fact that adult stem cells consistently have exhibited far less disastrous, more promising results. But no — Kinsley wants his cells to come specifically from embryos. Not only does his preferred stem cell therapy have to involve embryo destruction, but he won't be happy unless the embryo destruction is government-funded.

Although Kinsley and Fox could get their tumors through privately funded embryonic stem cell research (which, incidentally, has investors running for the hills), it's that magic touch of government money that keeps their hope for a miracle alive. Maybe subsidized embryos are so magical that cancer researchers are going to get jealous and declare that what they need are embryos too. And the AIDS people will be like: "Here all this time we were looking for an AIDS vaccine when what we must really need is an embryo!"

One day scientists may even find that injecting women with embryonic matter can inoculate them against future embryos, that is, they'll find a one-shot cure to pregnancy: immunizing women against any future such viruses as a form of permanent birth control. Embryonic patches will soon become an essential part of any First Aid kit.

Who knows — if government-subsidized discarded embryos are magical enough, maybe they could even cure homosexuality one day (not a choice, right?). So when they finally find and isolate the gay gene, they can look for it in developing embryos, weed them out, and use those embryos for therapy. How'd that be? A stem cell cure for homosexuality! If anyone is still gay after that, it's obviously a choice (tsk tsk!).

And with the growing popularity of "designer embryos" — screening for 200 diseases, as well as picking the sex and hair color — you can now design the embryos you destroy. Which means you can grow a blond, blue-eyed tumor! To be fair, embryonic stem cell research is still only in its embryonic stages, but it's showing a lot less potential than the embryos it destroys. (Hey, if embryos aren't people, then embryonic stem cell research isn't science, right?)

Then again, perhaps the Democrats indeed might be our best hope for cures to debilitating diseases and paraplegia. After all, if they're able to raise the dead to vote again, they can certainly heal the paralyzed to walk again. Given the euphoria over the Democratic congressional victory in places like Syria, Iran, and France, one can understand Democrats' obsession with stem cells: they're going to need as many as they can get to rebuild their spines. If the Democrats are right, one day healthy embryos will revitalize old men, who will start to feel great again, take Viagra and start cheating on their wives with younger women, impregnating them with their mutated sperm — which increases schizophrenia risk and causes less healthy children in general — leading to more sicklings clamoring for more embryonic stem cell research.

Embryonic stem cell research is already improving the economies of third-world countries like the Ukraine, where healthy new-born babies were killed "to feed a flourishing international trade in stem cells…Ukraine has become the self-styled stem cell capital of the world. There is a trade in stem cells from aborted foetuses, amid unproven claims they can help fight many diseases…The pictures show organs, including brains, have been stripped—and some bodies dismembered."

So fear not: with the Democrats in control of Congress, the kids will be experimenting on embryos in lab class before we know it.

And Michael J. Fox will never have to make another TV appearance without taking his embryo pill first. CRO

copyright 2007 Julia Gorin

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