RUSH: Mark, Wadsworth, Ohio, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi. Rush, you were talking about Michael J. I kind of agree with you. He shouldn’t use his disease as a political issue and —
RUSH: I didn’t say that. I said he can do whatever he wants, but you can’t expect nor can anybody else to not have anybody respond to it.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Once it becomes political, then it’s fair game, once you enter the political arena of ideas.
RUSH: Well, see, that’s the thing that offended me, the idea that Republicans don’t want diseases to be cured and if you elect Republicans, it will criminalize people who try to find a cure, that’s what he says in the ad.
CALLER: Yeah. And that’s a false hope. There’s no party going to pick up the research because it’s a dream world anyway. What I wish they would concentrate on is more a cause to prevent it so that my child doesn’t get it.
RUSH: Yeah, I understand. You know, what you’re illustrating, Mark, is over the years in this country — and I even, you know, I sort of cringe when I use this word to describe it. It seems like everything has become political these days.
CALLER: Yes, it has.
RUSH: But I’ll tell you, it used to be that in this country we fought diseases in a bipartisan way. I can remember presidents of the United States during State of the Union addresses announcing the war on cancer. Nixon did it once, and the whole chamber would stand up and applaud, not just one side, the Republicans or Democrats. Fighting cancer and fighting heart disease, they haven’t been politicized yet. Somehow Parkinson’s disease and spinal disease have been politicized.
CALLER: It’s all political, I know.
RUSH: It’s a dangerous thing, because we’ve always had a tradition of everybody banding together to try to solve these various diseases, come up with cures or treatments that advance our knowledge.
CALLER: I think it’s wasting time, valuable time.
RUSH: Well there’s more to it here than curing diseases is the point. Once you enter the political fray and start saying only one party will take it seriously then you’ve got another agenda on your mind or other things in your agenda rather than just research and cure the disease. So once that happens, I mean people that do that are fair game.
CALLER: Okay. A couple things about the disease that I felt you had wrong. I’m not the knowledge man on it but I’m going on my personal experience. The involuntary movement he had was medicine related. He probably had too much in this system.
RUSH: Yeah, I’ve gotten e-mails from people, doctors and others, people who suffer or their family members suffered, and, frankly, what I’m hearing is all over the board on it. A lot of people have said what you just said, that too much medicine can lead to those kinds of movements. Others have said not taking the medicine can. Others have said if you don’t take the medicine you’re basically just still with some slight tremors. But what I’m hearing — it’s impossible to come to a consensus about it because I’ve got so many people claiming to be family members, sufferers, doctors, and so forth, and everybody is telling me — not everybody, but I mean there’s a variety of explanations for this that I’m hearing. I don’t know which to believe.
CALLER: Well, I worked for the post office for 28 years, and the disease that took me, it made my muscles very stiff and unable to walk. And since then, I was diagnosed in ’98 and had to take a disability in 2004, and since then I have had surgery through the Cleveland Clinic and —
RUSH: Still there? Yeah, okay.
CALLER: It’s called BBS surgery. And I don’t know if you were aware of it. It’s not a cure, but it does eliminate a lot of the symptoms of Parkinson’s.
RUSH: Well, I’m learning a lot about this disease in the last two days. One of the things I learned, for example, Mark, yesterday was that at a Chicago hospital, an alternative therapy has been tried, and it’s shown far more prospects for success than any stem cell research has. It involves a virus inserted into the brain via a gene. Two nickel sized holes are drilled in the top of the head and the viruses is admitted or inserted, and what it does is stimulate the production of dopamine. Now, Michael J. Fox’s foundation donated $1.9 million to a study to further the research here after these promising results.
We talked about this yesterday, didn’t get reported on, but there’s an area of research into Parkinson’s nobody’s talking about, but it has nothing to do with stem cell research. This whole stem cell thing really is not about stem cells, folks, it’s about other things important to the leadership of the Democratic Party. Mark, I’m glad you called. I know it’s probably difficult for you, and I appreciate your effort and your courage.
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