Ron Reagan, I do not know what exactly it is that you believe. I know what I hear on TV, and I know what read in the newspapers about your stance on stem cell research. I have never met you and probably never will. But, my father died from Alzheimer's. He had a slow and terrible destruction of the very essence that made him human. He became a helpless silent remnant of what he once was. At the end, he was unable to talk, eat except through a feeding tube; helpless to dress him self, without control of his body functions, and once in a lucid moment asked why I kept him alive. This was a hard question, but the answer was I hoped medical science would find a way to restore hope where the only certainty was a gradual decline into death.
I realize stem cell research will take many years of trials before a person's loved ones might never again face this horrible reality. That there are probably worse deaths in the greater scheme of things, but few so painfully slow and agonizing to those left behind. In Boston at the Democratic Convention of 2004, you became the champion of us all. You were at least as eloquent as your father. He and all the victims and all the benefactors of the many cures that one-day will come will smile down and say, Well done, Thank You. That day, you grabbed the ball and won one for The Gipper.
Source: Alzheimer's Association
http://www.alzheimers.org/ http://www.bedfordresearch.org/
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/11/reagan.democrats/index.htm
Thomas P. Love
July 29, 2004
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