GOPer Compares Stem Cell Researchers To Mengele?!

On Thursday, Lt. Gov. Michael Steele -- Maryland GOP Senate candidate and purported moderate -- told a Jewish audience while discussing stem cell research: "You of all folks know what happens when people decide they want to experiment on human beings, when they want to take your life and use it as a tool."

And with that shameful comparison of the life-saving efforts by stem cell researchers to the "research" of Nazis like Mengele, Steele has once against demonstrated why he is beloved by social extremists.

Michael Steele owes all Marylanders -– and all Jews -– an apology for this amateurish, hurtful effort to play to his far-right-wing fundraising base. [We've previously noted Steele’s financial dependency on the far right.]

This type of comparison is profoundly offensive. Steele’s unmistakable reference to Nazi crimes against humanity is simply inappropriate when attempting to discuss an issue of public policy.

According to Friday's Baltimore Sun:

Sam Penn, a retired businessman and the board member who questioned Steele, said he thought the lieutenant governor's answer was "ludicrous."

"The Holocaust, they were killing people," Penn said. "Stem cell research, we want to help people."

That Steele has offered a weak clarification does not end the matter: "[I]n no way did I intend to equate the [Holocaust and stem cell research] or trivialize the pain and suffering of more than six million Jews."  Is that an acceptance of responsibility for the plain meaning of his words? [UPDATE: a direct apology the morning after the front page Baltimore Sun piece, and companion Washington Post article, can be found here.]

Consider what the non-partisan Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had to say when Dr. James C. Dobson compared "embryonic stem-cell research to the medical experiments carried out by Nazi doctors during the Holocaust" on his radio broadcast:

There is no legitimate comparison between stem-cell research, which seeks to find a cure for disease and to counter human suffering, and the perversion of science and morality represented by the actions of Nazi doctors who deliberately tortured their victims in medical 'experiments,'" said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "While reasonable, decent people may legitimately differ in their views of embryonic cell research, it is a gross distortion -– and an offensive misuse of the Holocaust -– to compare stem-cell research to the hideous barbarities of Nazi pseudo-science.

These comments are particularly odious given that American Jews -- even more than Americans generally -- overwhelmingly support stem cell research. As the Jewish Journal has noted, "All three major Jewish religious movements, as well as a majority within the American and Israeli Jewish community, support embryonic stem cell research."

For more on Jewish support for this cutting edge technology, check out Hadassah’s website (here and here), and please note the strong support from the Orthodox Union.

Even Robert Ehrlich -– Maryland’s Republican Governor, and the top of the ticket with whom Steele ran in 2002, has announced that he is moving forward on stem cell research... including potentially embryonic stem cells. [See the Baltimore Sun (free registration required) and Washington Post for details.]

Furthering the ironies… Israel is helping lead the way on stem cell research, and Steele just visited Israel with the stated goal of -- well, according to the Washington Jewish Week:

He was in the Jewish state this week to encourage Israeli businesses to set up sites in Maryland and, he said, start an "exciting new chapter" in the Maryland-Israel relationship.

Steele must have skipped Israel's dynamic biotech industry during his visit. Consider that Technion, the leading Israeli technical university, has been at the forefront of:

[D]eveloping the emerging science of embryonic stem cells. It was at Technion in November 1998 that [Dr.] Itskovitz-Eldor helped isolate the cells as part of a collaborative effort spearheaded by Dr. James Thomson from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Derived from an embryo five to seven days after fertilization, embryonic stem cells have the potential to develop into any cell in the body without a high risk of rejection by a patient's immune system.

In 2001, Itskovitz-Eldor and Dr. Lior Gepstein demonstrated that heart cells could be grown from embryonic stem cells to form a biological pacemaker. An actual pacemaker made of living cells is still years away.

And Technion's Dr. Karl Skorecki discovered that stem cells could be used to produce insulin, which could eventually lead to a treatment for Type 1 diabetes. Such is Technion's reputation in the field that the late Christopher Reeve visited the school in 2003 to explore whether its embryonic stem cell research could offer hope to those with spinal cord injuries.

Other Israeli institutions also have made their mark in stem cell research. Dr. Nissim Benvenisty of Hebrew University's Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, located in Jerusalem, was the first to genetically manipulate an embryonic stem cell in 2000. His work demonstrated that stem cells would have a smaller chance of being rejected by the body than other treatments.

At the Hadassah Embryonic Stem Cell Research Center, also in Jerusalem, Dr. Binyamin Reubinoff's team was able to grow new nerve cells in rats that reversed symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

For more on the Jewish community and stem cell research, you can look at the document that NJDC created during the 2004 presidential election.

Comments

[Richard Silverstein]

Thanks, David for providing this story. It's a real outrage. I've written a blog post (click on link attached to this comment) about it. Interestingly, an African-American from California wrote me this comment which I find instructive:

"I am an African American and I am equally outraged at the comments of Lt. Gov. Steele. Although I live in Brentwood, CA., I have decided to send a campaign check to Rep. Cardin.

All people of good will should expose every attempt to marginalize the holocaust as well as slavery by unprincipled politicians such as Steele."

Dissemination of even worthwhile science was halted.