The lame shall walk. . .

Investor's Business Daily

The Lame Shall Walk

Stem Cell Research: In more than 2,000 years, only one man who walked the Earth has done what John Edwards says John Kerry will do if elected. And His name isn't on the ballot.

In perhaps the most egregious example of political pandering in American political history, Edwards, in a 30-minute speech before 1,300 supporters jammed into a Newton, Iowa, high school gymnasium for a Monday morning campaign rally, promised the crowd:

"We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases. . . . When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."

Like a frontier charlatan peddling a magic elixir, Edwards has cynically exploited the countless number of people suffering from disease and infirmity, desperately clinging to their faith and hope, for political gain. If such a claim had come out of the mouth of Dick Cheney about President Bush, the outrage would be seismic in scale.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a physician, showed remarkable restraint in blasting Edwards' remarks, saying they were "cruel to people who have disabilities and chronic diseases. And on top of that, it's dishonest. It's giving false hope to people."

In comments first reported by CNN, Frist said: "I find it opportunistic to use the death of someone like Christopher Reeve — I think it is shameful — in order to mislead the American people."

As has been shown repeatedly on this page, the political charge that Bush is the only thing that stands between the sick and miracle cures because he's banned research on stem cells is demonstrably false.

Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research on existing stem cell lines has grown from zero in 2001 to $28.4 million, with no limits on future funding. Last year, the National Institutes of Health funded $190 million in "adult" stem cell research on, for example, cells from bone marrow or placental tissue.

At the same time, state governments and the private sector are supporting research outside federal guidelines, with one study estimating that 1,000 scientists at more than 30 firms spent $208 million experimenting on embryonic and adult stem cells in 2002 alone.

While research on adult stem cells has proved the most promising, we are nowhere close to a cure for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's or anything else. In Reader's Digest earlier this year, Reeve himself seemed to acknowledge that fact, saying: "It appears, though, at the moment, that embryonic stem cells are effective in treating acute injuries and are not able to do much about chronic injuries."

After Ron Reagan Jr. politically exploited his father's death from Alzheimer's at the Democratic convention, Ronald McKay, a National Institute of Neurological Disorders stem cell researcher, called the claim of an imminent cure for Alzheimer's a "fairy tale."

We don't know when, or even whether, human embryonic stem cells will prove therapeutically useful in treating any major disease or injury. We do know that if anyone with a spinal-cord injury rises up out of his wheelchair and walks, it will not be the election of John Kerry that makes that miracle happen.