I know—I knew—a man with Parkinson's Disease. He was a church organist. I first met him years ago, before his condition made itself evident and before he even knew he had the disease. I watched over the next several years as he developed tremors in his hands and had to give up his profession—and his love for performing music. The disease continued to progress, the incontrollable movements increased, became very much like the uncontrolled and uncontrollable movements of Michael J. Fox. And finally the man died.

Fox's symptoms show that the disease is pretty far advanced, and it made me wonder how much time he has left.

The thing so many "Pro-Life" people (imagine the words "Pro-Life" said with extreme sarcasm) don't get, or don't want to get is that the embryos from which the stem cells are derived are left-overs from fertility clinics, and are destined to be discarded anyway. They will never become living persons. Isn't it better to use that tiny spark of potential life that will never be otherwise realized to attempt to alleviate the suffering of people like Michael J. Fox, my organist friend, people with spinal cord injuries, diabetes, and a host of other diseases and conditions? Even if stem cell research fails, isn't it better to at least try than to follow some medieval notion of the "sanctity of life" when that life will never come into existence anyway. The alternated fate for these embryos, that have the potential for doing so much good, is to be scraped off the Petri dish into the biological waste can and burned.

"Pro-Life?" I don't think so!

And as to our GUEST friend above and his message of hate, and Rush Limbaugh with his contemptuous mocking, I am a peaceable, non-violent person, but after reading and watching their disgusting antics, I could happily watch the both of them be publicly flogged!

Don Firth