Advocates take fight for stem cells to voters

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Michael J. Fox, staring straight into the camera, boldly shows the effects of 15 years spent battling Parkinson's disease. He wants people to see what the illness has done to his body so they will support research that involves the use of human embryonic stem cells.

What Rush Limbaugh, the outspoken conservative radio show host, saw as Fox "acting" or not "taking his medicine," as he said publicly, was ignorance, say Parkinson's experts.

"It was ignorant and inappropriate," said Dr. Michele Tagliati, director of the Parkinson's Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan. "This movement is a side effect of years spent on these medicines. But patients with Parkinson's can't afford not to take their medicines."

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He has become the face of Parkinson's, but the issue strikes many diseases, said Dr. John Gearhart, Armstrong Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. Gearhart was one of the first to isolate, culture and develop the first human embryonic stem cells in 1998. He said these cells are so young that they can, in theory, be coaxed to become virtually any cell in the body.

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