Posted on 03/27/2005 2:23:30 PM PST by rmlew
The slick Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International flyer that appeared in Sunday newspapers throughout the country showed a little girl on monkey bars with her hand just inches from the next bar. "The cure is so close we can almost touch it," her accompanying mother says. Likewise, JDRF Chairwoman Mary Tyler Moore proclaimed in a recent TV commercial, "We are so close to finding a cure."
So wrong. JDRF is the world's largest juvenile diabetes philanthropy, distributing over $85 million in grants last year. Yet it supports no efforts that could lead to a cure any time soon for this blinding and crippling disease that afflicts as many as 1.7 million Americans. Instead it's become a lobby for controversial embryonic stem cell research and refuses to help fund the only study that could soon bring a cure.
Don't take my word for it. On the JDRF website's "stem cell information" page you'll find more links to ESC advocacy articles, editorials/Op-Eds and testimonies than a German wurst-maker has links.
"For further information" it refers readers to a single group -- the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research. But the only research CAMR seeks to advance concerns embryos; indeed, it's the nation's largest ESC lobbying group. JDRF was one of the eight founding members of CAMR in 2000 and the 2001 CAMR chairman was Lawrence Soler, currently a vice-president with the JDRF.
JDRF's chairman of program development, Gail Pressberg, is a senior fellow for the left-wing Civil Society Institute, which periodically releases slanted-question polls to persuade the federal and state governments to spend more on ESC research. Speaking of one such poll intended to support a New Jersey ESC bond initiative, Pressberg said in a press release: "This survey shows widespread support in New Jersey for letting the public decide the fate of state funding for stem-cell research." As ESC backers so often do, she left out the word"embryonic" to obfuscate the issue.
The top item on JDRF's "issue information" page is "Embryonic Stem Cell Research," with subcategories like Progress with Embryonic Stem Cell Research. It also bashes what many see as an alternative that's both medically superior and carries no moral baggage -- adult stem cells. Its "Limitations of Adult Stem Cell Research" link is packed with such disinformation as "Adult stem cells cannot be induced to develop into any cell type." In fact, since 2002 at least four different labs have published results indicating they can.
Now try the American Diabetes Association website. You won't see glorification of ESCs or bashing of ASCs. Those quaint folk only seem to care about diabetes, not politics.
By no means do all the members of JDRF buy into the ESC propaganda, but they are muzzled by the higher-ups. One form parents were forced to sign to attend the JDRF Children's Congress of 2003 stated: "If there is discussion of such controversial topics as embryonic stem-cell research, I will either embrace the JDRF legislative position on such topics or will not work against the JDRF position."
The JDRF also contributed $1 million to California's Proposition 71, which will funnel $3 billion in state funds to ESC researchers. Rep. Michael Castle, R.-Del., an ardent ESC research advocate, told the National Journal's Neil Munro that JDRF's ESC promotion is "the best lobbying campaign I've ever seen."
The ESC obsession "just flies in the face of their mission," insists Larry Raff, a former JDRF fundraiser and now president of the Autoimmune Disease Research Foundation. Raff and his wife have actually donated embryos for experimentation. But he knows what any honest ESC researcher will tell you -- that if ESCs ever translates into any human therapy it won't within the decade. "So close?"
Meanwhile, as I've written previously, Harvard researcher Dr. Denise Faustman was the first to cure diabetes in mice and now seeks funds for a clinical trial to replicate her fantastic results in humans. Thrice she has applied to JDRF; thrice they have rejected her. Never mind her impeccable credentials and that she even reviewed grants for JDRF.
Her transgression seems to be that her treatment involves restoring dead pancreas with ASCs already present in the body. Despite what the JDRF would have you think there have already been tremendous breakthroughs in ASC therapy, with over 80 treatments and almost 300 human clinical trials underway – versus zero treatments or trials for ESCs. Still, nothing would belie the false claims of ESC lobbyists more than curing diabetes with ASCs.
Of course there may be other reasons for rejecting Faustman, but JDRF won't say what they are. They refused to let me interview them, specifically citing my prior writings favorable to ASC research. Curious, that.
Former top Time Warner executive J. Richard Munro once chaired the JDRF board but is now bitter towards the group and sits on the board of Raff's organization instead. "I'm a huge fan of Denise [Faustman] and simply cannot understand why JDRF won't fund her," he told me. "For 25 years my two sons have been diabetic and it's maddening that nothing has changed.
Nor will it, if we count on the "so close" JDRF.
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Read Michael Fumento's additional work on biotech and on stem cells.
Michael Fumento is the author of numerous books. His book, a href="http://www.bioevolution.org/">BioEvolution: How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World, was published in 2003 by Encounter Books.
The politicization of research funding is infuriating. While the left uses the media to complain about conservatives, it is they who put the culture of death over treating children.
Ping and pass on
BTTT
I don't support any diabetes organization that advocates Type IIs like eating lots of whole grains. If I did that my blood sugar would be up above 170 ALL THE TIME and I'd die.
Likewise, the guys who tell me that Type I can be cured with stem cells (adult or embryonic) are skirting around the discovery that the Islets of Langerhans get wiped out by your own immune system in a very large percentage of cases. All that will happen is that the new Islets will get wiped out!
Type II does not appear to have any possible connection to stem cell activity.
It's truly shameful that this organization is wasting its money on useless quackery.
Back in the '80s, they ran a full-page ad in the NY Times soliciting donations. In the statistics about diabetes cited, numbers from Type 2 (adult onset) diabetes were used without EVER saying that there was a difference between the juvenile type and adult type--especially in numbers of patients.
I called them, left a message and this world-weary guy called me back to tell me that both diseases suffered from similar complications, so my point was not relevant. BS.
The ad was misleading and, I think, meant to be that way. They are liars and frauds over there.
BTW, suppressing the immune system has it's own problems. I wouldn't call anything that requires such suppression a "cure".
Pancreatic trauma such as that incurred by hemochromatosis is also causative.
Can you hear the music?... "With a name like cannibalism, it has to be good."
True, but WHY? WHY in this case?
I can understand WHY people think Michael Schiavo should be allowed to "eliminate" his inconvient wife; I can understand WHY people think abortion should be cheap, legal, and plentiful, I can really understand those who want the right to die, the right to chose, and the right to chose who should die. I don't think they are in the right, but I can easily understand their motives. Selfishness sums it up pretty well.
But I DO NOT UNDERSTAND this adult stem cells vs embryonic stem cells stuff. It all makes as much sense as the "feminists" supporting the women abusing Muslims, that is to say, none at all.
It's all a smokescreen to make abortion look more acceptable.
Without cancer, diabetes, or heart diease, such organizations and their officers would be out of their jobs and salaries.
It's no wonder that very little of their money goes to actual research looking for real cures.
Good point.Unfortunately when organizations get this large($$$$)the tendency is to employ a lot of HIGHLY paid execs(lawyers,PR,accountants,etc)that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.Also lots of administrative layers with lots of assistants doing lots of busy work.Finding a cure becomes secondary to maintaining a comfortable and secure lifestyle.
You sound like me - I eat protein and fats, and avoid rice, potatoes, pasta, and bread like poison - because to me, they are. Lipitor keeps my cholesterol below 150, and as long as I behave I keep my glucose around 100. But if I have breaded chicken for dinner instead of broiled, it will be at least 120.
I had severe diabetic neuropathy in both feet until I drove my wife to her podiatrist a month or so ago. When I mentioned neuropathy, he gave me a sample of LYRICA to try. Neurontin certainly wasn't working, but this stuff is GREAT! I'm still a long way from back to normal, and I now have false sensations of tingling, and hot/cold, but along with that I have actual TOUCH sensations. I am still getting used to it, but I hope that after a while I might even be able to go dancing again.
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