For giving me low-hanging fruit like this to blog about nearly any day I choose all the year 'round:
Voice for Life [Kathryn Jean Lopez]"[T]he EIB man" she's thankful for is none other than Rush Limbaugh, and the particular "good fight" she's celebrating is Limbaugh's mockery of Michael J. Fox's tremors in his Claire McCaskill senatorial campaign commercial of 2006.
In the spirit of giving thanks — thank you to the EIB man who fights the good fight on radio, to millions, taking many hits along the way.
Lopez's reasoning goes something like this: since Fox was advocating unimpeded scientific research into the curative properties of stem cells (including embryonic stem cells), and since this week's stem cell breakthrough may mean that embryonic stem cells are no longer necessary to pursuing such research, Fox was in the wrong and was fair game for Rush's ugly derision.
Except that, according to an article Kevin Drum blogged yesterday:
One of the researchers involved in yesterday's reports said the Bush restrictions may have slowed discovery of the new method, since scientists first had to study embryonic cells to find out how to accomplish the same thing without embryos.What's four or five years when you're suffering from Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, right, Kathryn Jean? Just kiss Rush's foot and go and have yourself a happy holiday.
"My feeling is that the political controversy set the field back four or five years," said James Thomson, who led a team at the University of Wisconsin and who discovered human embryonic stem cells in 1998.
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