RUSH: Fred in Loveland, Ohio. We go back to the phones. You’re next, and hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: Longtime respectful listener. I’m calling because I wanted to offer three quick points to support my opinion that it’s way too early to be arguing over embryonic stem cell therapy. In July of 2003, I received a stem cell transplantation of my own stem cells that had been harvested from my bloodstream.
RUSH: Wait a minute. You’re an adult, not an embryo.
CALLER: I’m an adult. I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1989. They began experimenting with stem cell transplantation to try and correct the disease and build a new immune system about five years ago. I went to Houston and got a transplantation of my own stem cells. Unfortunately, I had received scarring during the course of the 15 years of my disease, and so although my disease was arrested, I could technically say I’m cured of MS, I still have disability. I learned of a embryonic — no, I learned of a stem cell study that was going on 90 minutes from me in Indianapolis at IU, and it’s a study involving injecting stem cells into the legs of people that have vascular needs and need new vein growth and I called him.
I called the principal investigator and asked him if he knew of anyone that was injecting embryonic stem cells into spines. He said, “What would you want that for?” And I explained him. And he said, “Well, you wouldn’t want embryonic stem cells because that would require very, very careful patient matching, and the possibility of rejection would be very, very high.” He said, “I would consider perhaps another infusion of your own stem cells if you wanted to have that done,” but he said, “I don’t know anyone that is doing any investigation with stem cells in neurologic disease today.” So my point is, it is a very, very complicated procedure. It took me three months, and the protocol was changed multiple times as I was going through the process. The cost is about $125,000, and the results were anything but marvelous.
RUSH: But your adult stem cells, your own adult stem cells you said got rid of your MS, still left you disabled in some ways or with a disability, correct?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: But no research at all that was promising involving embryonic stem cells?
CALLER: No.
RUSH: And yet people ignore this research and success on the adult stem cell side and continue to focus on embryonic stem cells. I wonder why that is.
CALLER: I don’t know, and the techniques involved, we’re just learning how to handle adult stem cells, which you could have harvested from your own bone marrow in a few hours. Those techniques are years, maybe light years away from being perfected.
RUSH: Well, let me read to you again from an American Thinker piece today by Mary L. Davenport, M.D., obstetrician/gynecologist, a fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She says, “Today the plain fact is that embryonic stem cell research is proving to be a bust. There are currently 72 therapies showing human benefits using adult stem cells and zero using embryonic stem cells.” So we have an M.D. here who totally backs you up.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: And yet, and yet, the focus remains on embryonic stem cells, and I asked you why you thought that is, and you safely said you didn’t know. But the answer is politics.
CALLER: Yes, that’s true. One other point. In the Journal of Experimental Medicine this last March they even write that perhaps using <a target=new href=”http://www.aurorahealthcare.org/services/cancer/treatments/ascr/index.asp”>autologous stem cells</a> for transplantation in different types of autoimmune diseases, not unlike Parkinson’s disease, may end up having a better result because it allows for the growth of a more diverse population of new cells and that perhaps the embryonic stem cells will not produce as positive a result as your own stem cells.
RUSH: I’m sure. No matter where I look, you know, the only place I hear where there are promising cures on the horizon using embryonic stem cells are Democrats — and not Democrat doctors, by the way. Democrats and celebrities, I hear it from them but I don’t hear it from the medical community anywhere. I’m glad you called, Fred, thanks much. That was really interesting and valuable. You know, I had a story yesterday on this program, ladies and gentlemen, this organization of Nobel laureates and so forth from Johns Hopkins University trying to affect elections from Baltimore, the scientists and engineers for America, and they say that they’re ginning up and gearing up for the ’08 race.
Those are the people coming out pushing the same notion that embryonic stem cells are the answer to everything, except Republicans won’t let it happen! Republicans want patients to die and so forth and so on. You know, this embryonic stem cell thing is beginning to remind me of the old days. You remember the old medicine man, you’ve seen the medicine men portrayed in the movies, Westerns and so forth. Neil Diamond had a song “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show,” and so forth. These guys would run around and they’d have a bottle, and it would be the miracle possession that was going to cure you of everything. They would wander around from town to town and village to village selling this tonic that cured everything.
People believed it because they wanted to believe it, and they wanted to be pain free, they wanted to be happy, and they wanted to believe that whatever was promised was going to happen. But we occasionally, eventually came to know that they were quacks. This is where the word originates. These phony baloney medicine men running around with their little bottle of tonic claiming it was a cure-all for everything, and they were quacks. So society banned together and shut ’em down, sort of. But the quacks are back. Now they come at us again with promises of cures that are totally unsupportable, despite their impressive degrees and their research, but note the cures are only possible if we elect Democrats. So we’ve got quacks back in our midst and now they’ve gone political.
Not only will we only get the cures if we elect Democrats, we will never get the cures if we elect Republicans, because Republicans are mean-spirited extremists who want sick people to die, and like the quacks of old, these scientists who are politicizing the cure and research into diseases prey on the fears and hopes of people who desperately want cures for themselves and their loved ones, and that’s why I say it is cruel. So anybody who joins them in this quest is helping to perpetuate this myth. You know, these people have a stage to do really good things, and they use that stage to advance false notions, create false hopes, which is the ultimate cruelty. For example, look at Michael J. Fox supporting Benjamin Cardin, who votes against stem cell research!
But that doesn’t matter, Cardin’s a Democrat. So what’s really the agenda here? If you’re going to say, “I care about X,” and you support a candidate who doesn’t care about X, has voted against X, yet that candidate’s a Democrat so you attack the other guy, what are we to conclude from this? After all, it’s in the political arena. How many of you believed everything you were told by the Dems about Benjamin Cardin, Jim Talent, and Michael Steele? How many of you believed it? I’ll bet you a lot fewer of you believe it now. How many of you want your illness used simply to elect Democrats, regardless of how they stand on an issue you claim is important to you? An endless parade of victims! They’re not allowed to be scrutinized, just like Cindy Sheehan: a dupe, a tool of the Democrats and the drive-bys, hired by John Kerry, by the way, we’ve heard, in the ’04 campaign. It ultimately is sad because of all the cruelty involved in raising false hopes, when there is actual progress in other areas that they’re not interested in.
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