From the responses to certain issues raised by my column, I
feel it's fair to draw conclusions about my critics. The most
vituperative of these responses come from individuals who claim
to be pro-choice and do not take kindly to my pro-life position.
One hysterical letter-writer sent me a clipping of such a column.
My photo had a swastika scrawled over my face and red devil horns
drawn on my head. The anonymous scribe also asked if I had
crawled out from under a rock in Crawford, Texas.
The next category of Alicia Colonhaters, I am pleased to note,
are the animal-rights advocates who assailed me with insults
following my unsympathetic column on Pale Male, the red-tailed
hawk. One clever (at least he thought so) critic started his
e-mail off in the voice of Pale Male. "Screeech - squawk -
squawk! Chirp-chirp, tweet - tweet tweet! Caw-Caw-CAW!" Then
he went on to lament all that the poor evicted hawk had suffered
due to the thoughtless actions of humans. Tsk, tsk.
Missives like those suggest that many pro-choicers appear to be
animal rights activists as well. But what will happen when these
two hot-button issues collide?
The Westchester county executive, Andrew Spano, recently wrote a
letter to Governor Pataki and state legislators asking them for
help in launching a statewide drive to secure funds for embryonic
stem cell research. A referendum in California authorizing $6
billion in taxpayer dollars for research on embryonic stem cells
passed on Election Day, and I presume Mr. Spano expects New York
to follow suit.
Will animal-rights advocates be ready to launch protests against
using animals in this research, as they have in the past objected
to cosmetics industries' testing their products on animals?
Pssst! Rats are being tortured.
The headline of an article written by AP's Paul Elias read,
"Stem cell researcher makes paralyzed rats walk." The
article reports that a young microbiologist, Hans Keirstead, with
movie star good looks, injected brain cells concocted from
embryonic stem cells into paralyzed rats, enabling them to regain
movement. I smell a TV movie in the future, don't you? Not only
is the scientist young and handsome, he also happens to be
wealthy. What a perfect combination for the newsmagazines to
further romance the startling benefits of embryonic stem cells.
But where is Mr. Keirstead finding paralyzed rats to experiment
on? The lab rats are allegedly injected with a viral disease that
causes paralysis. I doubt that these rats were pushed off a
diving board into shallow water, or were the victims of other
tragic accidents that normally cause paralysis. Doesn't this make
the experiment flawed, since paralysis caused by a virus might be
more easily repaired by new brain cells than accident-induced
paralysis?
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals makes no bones about
its objections to animal research. On its Web site, PETA states,
"People who support animal rights believe that animals are
not ours to use for food, clothing, entertainment,
experimentation, or any other purpose and that animals deserve
consideration of their best interests regardless of whether they
are cute, useful to humans, or endangered and regardless of
whether any human cares about them at all (just as a mentally
challenged human has rights even if he or she is not cute or
useful and even if everyone dislikes him or her)." I'm
assuming that means rats as well.
Thus we can see that my critics will have to decide how to phrase
their objections to research that tortures lab rats. Any protest
might be viewed as an objection to embryonic research, which is a
pro-life position. What a conundrum.
As yet, no human has been helped by embryonic stem-cell therapy.
Rats that have been deliberately paralyzed have regained some
movement by this therapy but do not achieve complete recovery.
Embryonic stem-cell research became an issue in the last
presidential campaign because after Ronald Reagan's death from
Alzheimer's disease, his son Ron Reagan posed it as a possible
future cure for several illnesses. Likewise, Christopher Reeve's
widow, Dana Reeve, campaigned for state funds in California, as
did Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson's disease.
New Yorkers are the most taxed of all Americans. Soon we will be
asked to support extremely dubious research. Californians were so
influenced by celebrities that they voted for a bad referendum
item, and now they regret doing so. I'd like to think New Yorkers
are too smart to make the same mistake.
Then I review our voting record and think, "Uh-oh."