Hi, everybody-- I just wanted you all to know that I look in on the Blog for evidence that the whole world isn't cynical. I come back to this site every couple of hours, see the numbers changing, read a few entries, and reassure myself that I'm not all by myself. For me, this election is beyond personal. George Bush made a decision on August 9, 2001, that stopped medical research dead in its tracks. Up until that day, momentum towards finding out how to cure spinal cord injury (along with a host of other neurological problems) had been building. What George did was limit (to the point of nothingness) federal funding on research into stem cells, on the grounds that somebody somewhere might someday clone a human. The result was an almost total collapse of that kind of medical research in this country. The result was hundreds of thousands of paralyzed Americans told to wait. Again. Try this, my friends. Sit down in a chair. Now imagine yourself told to stay there until Christmas of 2006. Imagine doing just that, and then being told, well, no, not yet. Sit there until 2011. For paralyzed people, a few years is not nothing--it's their life slipping past while George goes running every morning, while he strides up to the microphones to tell how compassionate he is.
It's possible, the scientists now say, to cure paralysis. The obstacles aren't medical, they're political. Tell that to my kids, while they watch their dad struggle to get himself dressed in the morning, or while they look on as other kids' fathers chase them around the yard. It's possible that my husband would right now be signing up for treatments that would make him well, if not for George's decision on August 9, 2001. That day was also our 15th wedding anniversary, so I'm not likely to forget it. Think of us when you're reading articles like the one Joe quoted at the beginning of this thread. There's already blood all over the floor . . . I just thank God somebody's going to clean it up.