Ron Reagan to speak at Dem Convention
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| Mon, 07-12-2004 - 2:45am |
Democrats give Ron Reagan prime time speaking slot
Kerry aide: Late president's son to address stem cell research
From Kelly Wallace
CNN
Sunday, July 11, 2004 Posted: 10:58 PM EDT (0258 GMT)
Ron Reagan will speak at the Democratic National Convention.
(CNN) -- Ron Reagan will speak in prime time at the Democratic National Convention on the importance of stem cell research, a senior adviser to presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry told CNN on Sunday.
The Kerry adviser, who did not want to be identified, said the appearance of the younger son of the late former President Ronald Reagan came about after "overtures were made by both sides -- friends of both."
The adviser did not say on which night Reagan, 46, will speak. The four-day convention kicks off July 26 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Ron Reagan, a self-described liberal whose political views were often at odds with his conservative Republican father, has said publicly that he does not support President Bush's re-election.
Reagan raised eyebrows during his father's burial service in June when he said in his eulogy that his father "never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians, wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage."
Many observers thought the remark was aimed at Bush, who often speaks publicly of the role faith plays in his life.
Reagan later told CNN that he did not set out to take a dig at Bush, though after so many other people made that connection, "I began to think maybe I was. I just didn't know it."
Bush has limited the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research, citing moral and ethical concerns about performing experiments with fertilized human embryos.
Proponents of such research insist those restrictions interfere with efforts to develop new treatments for a variety of diseases, including Alzheimer's, which slowly killed the former president.
Former first lady Nancy Reagan has also called on Bush to reverse course on his stem cell policy.
A Bush campaign official said it was not surprising that a liberal would be speaking at the Democratic National Convention, and noted that Democratic Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia would speak at the Republican National Convention, which begins August 30 in New York City.
The Kerry adviser said Reagan's appearance at the convention would communicate to the American people that the Democratic ticket of Kerry and Sen. John Edwards "won't put ideology in front of sound science and let politics get in the way of what is best for the American people."
The adviser also said Reagan's speech would have "big appeal" to independents.
But the Bush campaign official predicted that the remarks by Miller -- who supported key parts of Bush's agenda -- would resonate more with independents.

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Here are two recent articles about the Bush administration's politicization of science.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/03/06/MNGVN5FO9L1.DTL
2 of Bush's science advisers say their board distorted facts
Report criticized for ignoring stem cell research
Gareth Cook, Boston Globe Saturday, March 6, 2004
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Two scientists from President Bush's top advisory board on cutting- edge medical research published a detailed criticism Friday of the board's own reports, and said the board skewed scientific facts in service of a political and ideological cause.
The authors -- one is a member of the president's Council on Bioethics and the other a renowned UCSF biologist fired from the council last week -- have accused the council's chairman, Leon Kass, of ignoring their scientific advice and refusing to include in the board's last report some information that would challenge Bush's restrictions on stem cell research.
Their allegations mark the sharpest public split yet within the council, formed in 2001 to guide U.S. policy through the increasingly difficult ethical terrain of such fields as cloning, in-vitro fertilization, and embryonic stem- cell research.
The authors of the critique published Friday were two of only three full- time scientists on the council. They said the council's last report, "Monitoring Stem Cell Research," did not make clear that a wave of recent scientific research has cast doubt on the potential of adult stem cells -- a type of cell that Bush held up as a promising alternative when he announced his restrictions on the use of embryonic cells.
Although the council is supposed to provide impartial advice to Bush, one of the scientists said Friday that its reports seemed to be driven by a preexisting agenda and did not accurately portray the scientific underpinnings of the ethical issues the council was grappling with.
"There is always this strong implication (in the reports) that medical research is not what God intended, that there is something unnatural about it, " said Elizabeth Blackburn, a UCSF biologist who was fired from the panel last Friday. "We had a great many comments on the report, and they would just make little changes that didn't fully address them."
A spokesperson for Kass said that he had no comment on the allegations and that the scientific comments of Blackburn and Janet Rowley, a University of Chicago biologist who co-wrote the critique, are adequately represented in the council's reports.
Their critique was published online Friday by the journal PLoS Biology. It adds to growing criticism from scientists that the Bush administration is manipulating the scientific advice it receives on politically charged issues, ranging from climate change to mercury contamination.
(continued...see link above)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/09/politics/09data.html
Scientists Say White House Questioned Their Politics
By KENNETH CHANG
Published: July 9, 2004
n a report released yesterday, a scientific advocacy group cited more instances of what it called the Bush administration's manipulation of science to fit its policy goals, including the questioning of nominees to scientific advisory panels about whether they had voted for President Bush.
Administration officials said that the conclusions of the report, issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists, were "wrong and misleading."
Dr. Kurt Gottfried, an emeritus professor of physics at Cornell University and the chairman of the scientists group, said that the administration's actions could cause researchers to leave the government.
"You can destroy that in a matter of years and then it can take another generation or two to get back to where you were in the first place," Dr. Gottfried said during a conference call with reporters yesterday.
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Dr. Gerald T. Keusch said that frustration led him to resign last year from the directorship of the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Keusch said the procedure for appointing members of advisory panels changed markedly with the change of administrations in 2001.
Dr. Keusch, who became director in 1998, said that before Mr. Bush took office, he proposed candidates and if the director of the National Institutes of Heath approved, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration invariably signed off on the nomination. But under the Bush administration, he said, Secretary Tommy G. Thompson's office rejected 19 of 26 candidates, including Dr. Torsten Wiesel, a Nobel laureate.
Dr. Keusch said that when he questioned the rejection, he was told that Dr. Wiesel had signed too many statements critical of Mr. Bush.
Bill Pierce, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said that Dr. Keusch was the only institute director to complain about the process and that Mr. Thompson was the one responsible for the appointments.
"That's what we do and that's how we do it," Mr. Pierce said. "This is the responsibility of governance."
The Union of Concerned Scientists, whose views often run counter to those of the administration, issued a 34-page report describing Dr. Keusch's experience and other instances that it said illustrated the administration's injecting politics into science. The scientists issued an earlier report in February, and 62 prominent scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, signed an accompanying statement.
Ron's certainly enjoying his time in the spotlight again at his father's expense. I wonder if he put his money where his mouth is and made the maximum contribution to the candidate of his choice
Renee ~~~
To imply that Reagan is doing this because he craves the spotlight is just silly.
Every adult has an obligation to themselves to form their own ideas & positions and
Renee ~~~
Isn't that what Ron is doing? Sure seems like it to me...
"Without music, life is a journey through the desert"...
Ron may have disagreed with his father politically, but there is no doubt that they loved each other. Many Americans disagreed with Pres. Reagan's politics, but most also respect him as our former president (a respect not being earned by our current president).
Renee, you seem to be an intelligent, well-educated person, but your posts are often laden with personal insults to the intelligence of the opposition and, IMHO, purely spouting the Republican line. Please use some of that intelligence to really look at the facts and how this administration has affected the economy (getting better, but only after one of the worst downfalls in history, under this same administration), personal lives (reproduction rights, women's rights, GLBT rights, over-worked military--not to mention other atrocities in Iraq, all from a party that says government shouldn't intrude on the lives of the individual), the cutting of social programs for the poor and aged, the Medicare fiasco and spin, the pre-determined invasion of Iraq to avenge his father's failure, the use of faulty intelligence to back up his plans to invade, and now the possible "postponing" of the election that they don't want to have...the list goes on and on.
I agree 100%!
<<I've known countless people, myself included, that have become supporters of research and charitable organizations that seek to cure horrible diseases because it has affected or taken the life of someone close to them. >>
Me, too.
<>
No, he's not.
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Which is his right.
<and against the administration that has clearly come out against it.>>
That is
Renee ~~~
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