The following editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News on Oct. 26:
For a brief moment, Michael J. Fox looks like an average, healthy man. Then his jerky, involuntary movements and halting speech reveal the heart-wrenching, compelling truth about Parkinson’s disease.
It’s painful to watch. Extremely painful.
But that’s precisely the point of the campaign ads. Body-ravaging diseases often are as excruciating to those who endure their loved ones’ sufferings as they are to the person actually afflicted.
One would think that Rush Limbaugh, who has struggled with his own personal demons, would have some understanding of this.
But no, he was busy declaring that Fox’s campaign commercials for Democratic candidates in Missouri and Maryland who favor stem cell research are a “shameless” political exploitation of his illness.
Limbaugh has every right to take issue with Fox’s political choice and to question whether Republican candidates are fairly depicted.
But impugning Fox’s motives and the integrity of his symptoms is extraordinarily callous, even in the brass-knuckles world of politics. And, sorry, but Limbaugh’s apology didn’t wipe the slate anywhere near clean for us.
Like the late Christopher Reeve, whose riding accident made him a tireless campaigner for paralysis research, Fox’s struggles with Parkinson’s and advocacy work to find a cure are widely known.
We support stem cell research and other medical work, as do most Americans, in the hope that scientists eventually will find a cure for debilitating diseases and injuries. An estimated 1 million Americans suffer from Parkinson’s. An additional 40,000 new cases are diagnosed each year, and many of theses are people under 50 years old.
If Fox misrepresented the positions of Republican candidates, shame on him. We’ll leave it to those GOP opponents to challenge any of the assertions made against them in the ads.
But accusing Fox of exploiting his own disease — a chronic and progressive movement disorder whose symptoms include tremors of the hands, arms, legs and face — leaves Limbaugh playing the bad guy’s role.
No, it’s not a pretty picture. But that’s the reality of it.
7012018
source: northjersey.com
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