RUSH: One of the big issues in the Missouri Senate race — as you know, we touched on it yesterday — is the Michael J. Fox commercial which is entirely misleading and which is in itself an attack ad, and it is filled with disinformation about embryonic stem cell research and how Jim Talent wants to criminalize it. Embryonic stem cell research — and, by the way, Fox is doing similar commercials in Maryland now for Ben Cardin against Michael Steele. But embryonic stem cell research is currently legal and completely unrestricted in both Maryland and Missouri and in the vast majority of other states. It’s largely personal and institutional ethics that keep scientists from cloning research.
The debate we’re having is almost always about governmental funding or radical measures like the one currently on the ballot in Missouri, which is Amendment 2, which would write a right to cloning into the state constitution of Missouri, and it’s one of these cleverly worded things that makes you: if you vote yes, you’re voting no, and vice-versa. So we’ll talk more about the Michael Fox situation because, as I knew yesterday, the Drive-By Media, including things like Inside Edition, are all panting (panting) to make something out of this that isn’t. We will address that, but Michael J. Fox entered the political arena long ago. He became a US citizen in 2000.
He’s from Canada. He was active in the Kerry campaign in 2004 and he’s entered the political arena again with this series of commercials for Ben Cardin in Maryland and Claire McCaskill in Missouri. One of the tactics the Democrats have — and they’ve used this consistently. They bring forth people who they think are victims for the purposes of exploiting them, and when you bring forth — for example, if you’re talking about embryonic stem cell research, and you want to convey the notion that the Republicans are opposed to it, and in effect they’re for people having Parkinson’s Disease. Make no mistake that’s what the intent is.
Then you bring forth a person who’s suffering the disease, and you illustrate the disease and the ravages and the suffering on TV to create sympathy and infallibility, because you’re not supposed to be able to attack somebody or criticize somebody in any way or in any regard if they suffer from the disease. It’s considered cold-hearted and cruel. What’s happening here is that Michael Fox has entered the political arena with his attack, which includes false information about Senator Talent and Michael Steele in Maryland. That’s fair game, and I am not going to follow the script that says we’re not allowed to comment on the things said by participants, ‘victims,’ what have you, that the Democrats put forth as infallible in the middle of a political campaign.
I would argue that Mr. Fox is damaging what has traditionally been a bipartisan effort at addressing and curing illnesses, and that is the primary point here. Democrats are politicizing diseases and illnesses. The Breck Girl, John Edwards, promising, if John Kerry is elected, that Christopher Reeve and others with spinal paralysis would walk, when there’s no such is evidence that any research into embryonic stem cells will create any immediate cure toward anything. It is irresponsible to mislead victims of people suffering from these horrible diseases in such a fashion. But that’s exactly what has happened.
That’s what the Democrats are doing, politicizing diseases and illnesses, damaging what has traditionally been a bipartisan effort at addressing and curing illnesses, and the same time they claim if you don’t embrace their political and cultural agenda, then you’re for Parkinson’s disease, and you are for spinal paralysis. It’s no different than the way they do it in the environmental movement. They talk about dirty water and dirty air, and if you oppose the environmentalists, why, you must be for dirty water and dirty air! You don’t want clean water and clean air, and this is a script that they have written for years. Senate Democrats used to parade victims of various diseases or social concerns or poverty up before congressional committees and let them testify, and they were infallible. You couldn’t criticize them.
It was the same thing with the Jersey Girls after 9/11, and in the period of time when the 9/11 commission was meeting publicly. Victims are infallible. Whatever they say cannot be challenged. I don’t follow the script anymore. Now, in terms of Michael J. Fox, I did some research today, and I found his book that was published. It’s ‘Lucky Man,’ 2002, but he admits in the book that before Senate subcommittee on appropriations I think in 1999, September of 1999, he did not take his medication for the purposes of having the ravages and the horrors of Parkinson’s disease illustrated, which was what he has done in the commercials that are running for Claire McCaskill and Jim Talent. So when you insert yourself into the political arena this way, to expect insulation and absolution and to expect yourself not to have what you say criticized in the manner in which you’re trying to sway opinion is a little bit I think above the fray. I mean, to think that you’re immune from any sort of criticism, it’s worked in the past for Democrats, but it doesn’t work here.
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RUSH: Let me explain to you, ladies and gentlemen, what’s going on in my home state that has made this whole stem cell debate so controversial there, and it is typical of the Democrats in this country and the left who can only succeed by misleading. Here’s the history in Missouri. For four years, legislators in Missouri have tried to pass a simple ban on human cloning, something that neighboring states to Missouri have done. It’s a one-page piece of legislation, a one-page bill. It has never passed. It says that ‘somatic cell nuclear transfer,’ that’s cloning, ‘will be a crime in Missouri. Somatic cell nuclear transfer is the scientific term for cloning, the same method used to clone Dolly the sheep.
‘The other side makes hysterical claims that this bill would criminalize embryonic stem cell research and put patients in jail, and both claims are utterly false. Today in Missouri, there is a constitutional amendment called Amendment 2, and it calls itself the ‘Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative.’ McCaskill favors it. Senator Talent opposes it. Amendment 2 is misleading in that it appears to put stem cell research in the Constitution and to ban human cloning, but the fine print creates a right to do somatic cell nuclear transfer, cloning, which is the scientific term for cloning, the same method used to clone Dolly the sheep.’ Now, The Amendment 2 proponents are using Michael J. Fox and trotting out other people with sick relatives to try to convince Missourians that there will be no cures for their diseases without Amendment 2, which is a cloning amendment that has nothing to do with stem cell research.
The truth is, all stem cell research is legal today in Missouri. Jim Talent does not seek to criminalize it, as Michael J. Fox asserts in his television commercial. Stem cell research is legal today in Missouri, it is happening at universities across the state. The truth is Amendment 2 would put human cloning in the Constitution. Now, the Michael J. Fox ad says that Talent wants to criminalize research, and this is false. It is already legal and it’s already happening. Senator Talent and other opponents of Amendment 2 are not touching stem cell research in any way. What they want to do is stop human cloning from becoming a new right in the Missouri Constitution, and so they have named the pro-cloning bill the stem cell research and cures initiative so that people will go to the polls on November the 7th and think they’re voting for stem cell research, which is already legal. 
Michael J. Fox is participating in this disinformation campaign. Folks, I don’t care what anybody says, it is unseemly, it is exploitative, and it is downright mean to mislead people who suffer from incurable diseases at the moment or horrible diseases, that there is a cure around the corner if only, if only Republicans could be defeated. There has been a tradition in this country of bipartisan efforts to cure all of these diseases or to come up with vaccinations for them, but never mind that, we’re in the process here now of damaging what has traditionally been this bipartisan effort in addressing and curing illnesses by politicizing them. We’re now politicizing diseases and illnesses.
The Democrats politicized spinal paralysis and spinal injuries in the 2004 campaign, and now they are politicizing Parkinson’s disease, and they’ve done that, and it’s all about stem cell research, and of course embryonic stem cell research. Any bit of information or research that shows progress in either of these areas that does not involve stem cell, embryonic stem cell research, is rejected by the left. Now, why is this? What is so damned important about embryonic stem cell research? Why not adult stem cells? Why not research on umbilical cord blood cells that can be extracted from the blood in the umbilical cord? Because you can’t take abortion out of this mix.
Just because it’s not being talked about in this campaign, do not be lulled and fooled into thinking that abortion does not remain the sacrament of the Democratic Party and its religion. It is the thing that they will never once compromise on, and they think that anything that stands in the way of embryonic stem cell research is going to be an obstacle to having abortions, and the converse is true. If you can open up the field of embryonic stem cell research and just go out and get an embryo, what do you have to do to get an embryo? I’ve heard some Democrats say, “Well, an embryo is not fertilized, is it?” How little they know. Of course it’s fertilized, and you have to kill it, and of course that advances the notion I told you long ago, folks.
If you leave it up to these liberals, you’re going to end up with a culture where they are going to decide who lives and who dies based on the convenience and personal preferences of theirs. We’re already eliminating kids in the womb. We’re eliminating the elderly because they’re an inconvenience, and now we want to eliminate the embryos and fetuses because we might be able to cure disease even though there’s no evidence whatsoever for it. So for people to say that it is unfair to criticize things said by people who enter this arena just because they suffer from a certain disease, that may be the Democrats’ script for all these years, but it is not a script I’m going to follow anymore.
Again, Michael J. Fox is saying that Jim Talent, a Republican incumbent Senator wants to criminalize research. It is false. Talent and other opponents of Amendment 2 in Missouri are not touching stem cell research in any way. What they want to do is stop human cloning from becoming a new right in the Missouri Constitution. Missourians against human cloning are up against a $30 million spin campaign. It’s an unheard of amount of money. It breaks all records for statewide campaigns in the history of Missouri. And their main spin is that the somatic cell nuclear transfer isn’t cloning. But the National Academy of Sciences and so forth and other organizations say that it is. It is more deception from the left designed to trap you into voting for something that actually isn’t on the ballot at all.
RUSH: All right, people are asking for the cite, that’s c-i-t-e. This would be Michael J. Fox, <a target=new href=”http://www.michaeljfox.org/news/article.php?id=5″>an excerpt</a> from his book “Lucky Man” June 1, 2002. Here is what he writes regarding his appearance before a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing in Washington on September 28th, 1999: “I had made a deliberate choice to appear before the subcommittee without medication. It seemed to me that this occasion demanded that my testimony about the effects of the disease and the urgency we as a community were feeling be seen as well as heard. For people who had never observed me in this kind of shape, the transformation must have been startling,” as it was for me when I saw the commercial he was running in Missouri, because I had never seen him that way before, ever, and I got numerous e-mails from people saying he had said that he does this: goes off the medication to illustrate the ravages of the disease to people and so it’s in his own book, that he admits doing this. 
Now, Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review Online has a story on their website today: “Doc Hollywood on the Campaign Trail; What Michael J. Fox learned while on Spin City,” and in it she quotes Princeton professor Robert P. George, who sits on the president’s bioethics commission, and he says this: “I have great sympathy for Mr. Fox and other victims of Parkinson’s and similarly horrible diseases. I understand how desperately he hopes for a cure for what afflicts him and so many others. I have seen members of my own family suffer, and I too want to hasten the day when the great engine of science conquers the diseases that cause so much suffering. But the fact that Mr. Fox is a victim is not a license for him to mislead or manipulate the public.
“The truth ? the whole truth ? must be told. Those politicians who, for political gain, have run these ads in which the truth is distorted and people are misled deserve the most severe of reprimands. Win or lose, they have brought upon themselves disgrace.” That, ladies and gentlemen, is my whole point: “that Mr. Fox is a victim is not a license for him to mislead or manipulate the public. The truth — the whole truth — must be told. Those politicians who for political gain have run these ads in which the truth is distorted and people are misled deserve the most severe of reprimands. Win or lose, they have brought upon themselves disgrace.” That, ladies and gentlemen, is my whole point. “Mr. Fox is a victim is not a license for him to mislead or manipulate the public. The truth — the whole truth — must be told. Those politicians who for political gain have run these ads in which the truth is distorted and people are misled deserve the most severe of reprimands. Win or lose, they have brought upon themselves disgrace.”
That is happening to Claire McCaskill in Missouri today. Ben Cardin in Maryland are both disgracing themselves by exploiting the suffering of this disease in the effort to politicize it and to make it appear to voters in their states, Missouri and Maryland, that voters for — well, let’s put it this way: Making it appear that their opponents, Jim Talent in Missouri and Michael Steele in Maryland, are for Parkinson’s disease because they are opposed to research which would cure it. Nothing could be further from the truth. I can’t emphasize this enough. Embryonic stem cell research in Missouri is legal, and it is ongoing, and nobody wants to criminalize it. To the phones we go. This is Carol is it San Diego. You’re up first today. It’s nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Mega dittos from the left coast.
RUSH: Thank you. Nice to have you with us.
CALLER: I called because I saw on, I believe it was Fox News. Dr. Rosenfeld has a show. I think it’s on Sunday.
RUSH: That would be Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld, yes.
CALLER: That’s him, and he was talking about a cure that they’re coming up with for Parkinson’s disease that has nothing to do with stem cells, it has to do with a virus that is going to be injected in the brain, a harmless virus. The body produces whatever it is that the Parkinson’s disease people are missing. The brain would actually produce this, and the disease would disappear.
RUSH: This is the hope. Now, wait, this is the hope. I have a story here that I think is along the lines of what Carol is talking about. It is a UPI story from October the 11th, 13 days ago. ‘Researches at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago…’ and I am not making this up, ladies and gentlemen. ‘Researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago have said a new Parkinson’s disease treatment reduced symptoms by 40 percent. However, researchers said the test only involved 12 patients and may have been affected by the placebo effect, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Wednesday. Further tests of the gene therapy method could solidify the treatment as the first known to slow, halt or possibly reverse damage done by the progressive disease.
‘Treatments are currently available to relieve symptoms of the illness, but do not stop the disease from progressing. The procedure features two nickel-size holes drilled into the top of a patient’s head by a brain surgeon. A virus…’ She’s right. ‘A virus containing the desired gene is then inserted into the brain using a needle, and the virus carries the gene to the brain cells. The cells are then instructed by the gene to produce a protein that protects and regenerates cells that make dopamine.’ Dopamine is what’s missing in Parkinson disease sufferers. Now get this. Here’s the clincher: ‘The results were announced at a meeting of the American Neurological Association in Chicago. The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research has donated $1.9 million for a follow-up study.’
So the Michael J. Fox Foundation currently, with its namesake, doing commercials misleading Missourians and Marylanders on the effects of stem cell research and the idea that Republicans want to criminalize this research and stop and prevent a cure for Parkinson’s disease has actually funded a follow-up study to this virus research that involves gene therapy. Do I need to say more? They’re still not sure about this but it shows promising results, far more promising than anything that has come from embryonic stem cell research to date, ladies and gentlemen. Now, this has to be known by Mr. Fox since his foundation donated $1.9 million for a follow-up study on this and yet he still is producing these commercials. Now, who do you want to blame, you want to blame Fox or do you want to blame the candidates for running them? Robert George, the professor at Princeton, blames the candidates. They’re the ones who are disgraced by exploiting and using the sufferers of this disease to politicize the illness and for political gain. Jane, Lees Summit, Missouri, welcome to the program.
CALLER: Primo dittos to you, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you, thank you very much.
CALLER: I count it a privilege to talk to you. I wanted to call regarding this embryonic stem cell research as a person who has brain cancer, type one diabetes, taking four shots a day, had rheumatoid arthritis, two broken bones in my leg that have not healed in six years —
RUSH: Why, is that because of diabetes?
CALLER: Right. Right, and so I’m in a wheelchair. So I have a vested interest in this. But I see this stem cell research as being another gambling issue in Missouri. They say one thing, but they do another. They talk about creating a cure, but what they really want to do is clone, and I am totally against the cloning, and I see Claire McCaskill as just being another deceptive liberal.
RUSH: No question about it. There’s no other way to categorize this. Again, ladies and gentlemen, not to beat a dead horse, but repetition is the best way people learn. Amendment 2 on the ballot in Missouri, it calls itself the stem cell research and cures initiative. It has nothing to do with that. It is a cloning initiative. The way they’re getting away with this is that the scientific name for cloning is ‘somatic cell nuclear transfer’ The syllables all run together for people that pay average amounts of attention. It’s a pro-cloning bill, calling itself the stem cell research and cures initiative, and this is what makes this commercial by Michael J. Fox so all the more misleading. He’s actually trying to tell voters in this commercial that Claire McCaskill is running that Jim Talent ‘opposes stem cell research’ and Jim Talent wants to ‘criminalize’ it. So does Michael Steele in Maryland.
Thus they want people who suffer these diseases to continue to, when in fact the Amendment 2 is not even about stem cell research. It’s about cloning! The bill has failed to become law for four years. For four years, legislators have tried to pass a ban on human cloning, and the bill has never passed, and so they’re trying to write a cloning amendment to the US Constitution, and they’re making everybody think that the cloning amendment is nothing more than stem cell research. They’re preying on people’s ignorance, they’re creating false hope for people who suffer from these diseases that this vote for Amendment 2 will lead to a cure for what they have, no different than what John Edwards was doing in 2004 when promising that if John Kerry is elected we’ll do the work necessary and Christopher Reeve will be walking soon. So Jane, how many people do you run into in Missouri that are confused about this?
CALLER: Oh, probably every third person. I have a fairly large group of friends, and we have talked about it incessantly, and it’s just, you know, everybody is confused and —
RUSH: Well, that’s the idea.
CALLER: Right, and to me, if liberals are for it, then I’m against it.
RUSH: Yeah. (laughing) You and I on the same page.
CALLER: Right, and I see this as a whole cottage industry growing up to harvest women’s eggs and taking advantage of young women who are in a financial crisis, harvesting their eggs and then at some point they will find out that they’ve sacrificed their fertility.
RUSH: Yeah. There is an upside to this.
CALLER: Yeah?
RUSH: The only upside is that liberals will be continuing to abort themselves, which will weaken their political strength in the future — which, you know, makes this a tough call on the political side. Morally and ethically, of course, it’s simple.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Jane, great call, I’m glad you took the time to get through.
CALLER: Thank you very much sir.
RUSH: All the best.
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RUSH: Steve in Kankakee, Illinois. You’re next, sir. It’s great to have you with us.
CALLER: Yeah. Rush, mega dittos.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Vietnam veteran and retired police officer. I just wanted to call on how the Democrats are — with their sympathy vote, they recruited Tammy Duckworth to run for Henry Hyde’s seat in DuPage County, and I think this is just another example of them going —
RUSH: Tell people out there in Rio Linda who Tammy Duckworth is.
CALLER: Well, Tammy Duckworth is the veteran of the Iraq war, and she lost two legs while in combat, and when she came back, they, Democrats, now they’ve recruited her to run against Peter Roskam for Henry Hyde’s seat in DuPage County up around Elmhurst.
RUSH: Yeah. Well, I know it’s the fear thing — or the sympathy thing — but I actually think it’s something else out there, Steve, and I think it’s not new. There’s nothing new in the Democratic Party playbook. This is nothing but fear. The Michael J. Fox ads in Missouri and Maryland play on people’s fears. The attempt to come up with a cure for spinal paralysis is nothing but an attempt to play on people’s fears. Throughout my political awareness, my adult years, I have listened to Democrats say that the election of Republicans will lead to the end of Social Security; that people will be kicked out of their homes, that their money will be snatched in any number of ways; that senior citizens will be eating dog food as opposed to getting prescriptions because the Republicans are going to fix it so they don’t have enough money to do both.
This is quite common, but fear is something that everybody battles through every day. Everybody fears something multiple times a day. If you’re a Social Security recipient, and that’s all you’ve got, and a trusted Democrat politician comes along and tells you that the Republicans are going to take it away from you, you may not be able to take the chance that they’re lying to you. Take a look at NAACP ads in 2000 and 2004. We had radio ads suggesting (in St. Louis, by the way) that Bush was responsible for black churches burning. We had a television ad, the James Byrd ad, a lynching ad that Bush didn’t do anything about James Byrd being dragged behind the bumper of a fast-moving automobile down a dirt road.
These are frequent and common appearances. So the Tammy Duckworth situation, there may be a little difference here, but, you know, Democrats, in addition to Tammy Duckworth, have gone out and recruited eight Iraq war veterans — and none of them are doing well. Some of them didn’t even survive their primary. Within a week of Bush taking office in 2000, he was responsible for leaving arsenic in the water that was going to poison everybody! Forty-three to 53 million Americans don’t have health insurance and cannot go to the doctor, and they’re just one breath away, one inhale away from getting a fatal disease. So this is unseemly stuff, and it’s playing not so much on sympathy but on fear.
You take people are horrible diseases, like Michael J. Fox has, Parkinson’s disease or something else that gets progressively worse over time — Alzheimer’s, you name it, cancer that is not curable — to exploit these diseases and to try to convince voters that there is a political party who doesn’t want the cure to ever happen, that they want people to get sick and they want people to die. It’s no different than saying they’re going to take all your money away by cutting your Social Security and kick you out of your house. I’ll never forget, 1985, ’86, working at — ’84, actually, in Sacramento, Ronald Reagan was responsible for AIDS.
Ronald Reagan and the Republicans wanted AIDS victims to die — and you know why? Because Reagan never uttered the word! Reagan never talked about AIDS. You go look at the federal budgets, the outlays on AIDS research, and you’ll see the lie put to that myth. Now, this is a common Democrat tactic. It is very common to lie and misname ballot initiatives to convince people they’re voting for just the opposite of what they think they’re voting for. This is how Democrats operate. Ladies and gentlemen, learn it; love it; live it: Democrats cannot look you in the eye and say here’s what we’re for and convince you to vote for it. They have to trick you, they have to lie to you, they have to try to fool you or mislead you while camouflaging themselves, and this latest tactic of the Michael J. Fox commercial in Missouri and Maryland is just the latest incarnation.
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