Election Day Diary Part VI

the Stem Cell Page

time and ignorance are the enemies

Election Day Diary

PART VI

After our showers and a change of clothes we headed off to the Knight Center at Washington University. Up on the third floor we were directed to the opposite end of the hall. Blue and white balloons flanked a welcome table. A woman asked us to fill out name tags. I noticed hers. It read “Linda Mantle.” Linda had kept us updated with daily press clippings, distributed by email. We had chatted by telephone and exchanged emails, but had never actually met, an all too common occurrence in this electronic age.

I introduced myself, thanked her for her work and introduced my wife. After she and Zelda played ‘St. Louis Geography’ for a moment, they realized they knew each other from years past. They had been members of the St. Louis Fashion Group, an organization of the apparel industry. I always kid my wife that, “No matter where we go, you can’t swing a dead cat over your head without hitting someone you know.” Once again, proven right.

As we entered the room, there was a raised platform occupied by the television news media. There were cameras, lights and reporters doing interviews with Donn Rubin, the Coalition’s chairman, and with Reverend B. T. Rice, who had done much outreach in the African-American community.

As we began to mingle with the crowd, I saw Dena Ladd, another of the public speakers and a terrific worker bee. She’s always great to be around and to this day I have yet to see her frown. We said hello to Deb Dubin. Nobody keeps her cool like Deb. I never, ever saw her get rattled. I waved at Charlie Boyd, the retired Marine colonel, whom I had assisted in the launch of the Semper Fi for Life Foundation. As he came over and gave Zelda a hug I thought back to my first stem cell conversation with Charlie and how I convinced him that the foundation should lead the way, becoming the first military related organization to endorse the Stem Cell Initiative. After I had explained a bit about the research and it’s medical potential, Charlie had asked, “What’s the downside?”

I knew what he meant. What he meant was ‘Could this cause the Foundation any fallout down the road?’ But I ignored that and answered his literal question: “The downside, Charlie, is that all those veterans in wheelchairs never walk again.” That was all it took. Charlie became committed to the pro-cures stem movement then and there.

I introduced Zelda to Connie Farrow, the young press liaison, who always had just the right words quoted in the newspaper. Vincent Flewellen, the Speakers Bureau Coordinator, came over and said hello. I spotted Don Christofferson by one of the television monitors. I had met Don on the bus that carried us to the rally in Jefferson City back in August. What a great fellow. He had received a successful treatment of adult stem cells for his Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma five years ago, but also lost a friend to the same disease after the same type of treatment failed, and Don became a determined activist.

Maggie Duwe was there, but that wasn’t unusual. Maggie seemed to be present at every event. Her smile and enthusiasm were exceeded only by her dedication. We said hello to Tom and Pat Jackson, whose eighteen year old son, Chris, suffers from diabetes. Tom was featured in one of the television commercials aired by the Coalition. Years ago, Tom and Pat had met with Jim Talent – when Talent was still a congressman – to plead their case against the Brownback bill. They had also testified at hearings in the State Capitol in Jefferson City.

Reverend Rice, now finished with his TV interview, came over and said hello. I asked if his son had returned from Iraq and his face lit up. “Yes, he’s home now and he returned safely. We couldn’t be happier.”

As I scanned the room, I couldn’t find Laura Winter. Laura had been my first connection to the Coalition. I sought out Linda Mantle and she told me Laura was in the hospital, having delivered her baby yesterday. I remembered asking Laura when the baby was due, and she’d said, “As far as I’m concerned, anytime after the election.” Apparently Robert Rudolph Winter had a different plan and put his mom into labor the day before Election Day. (That’s nothing, Laura. Just wait until he’s two... or a teenager.)

I visited for a few moments with Bill Danforth, Chancellor Emeritus of Washington University and Chairman of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, where our daughter had done a stint as an intern. Someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was David Eagleton. David had worked behind the scenes with Bernie Frank, an attorney who was stricken with Parkinson’s.

We were at the back of the room when a fellow walked by me. He was noticeably taller than I am, and at my 6’1” frame that’s not all that ordinary. I recognized him from his photographs and video clips. It was Dr. Steven Teiltelbaum, the physician-scientist from the pathology department of Washington University School of Medicine. Using adult stem cells, Teitelbaum had proven a method which could cure an otherwise terminal children’s disease. The remaining problem, though, was the vast difficulty with exact tissue matching still left nearly all the disease’s victims doomed to an early death – usually by the age of seven. All the more reason why Steven has been an ardent supporter of somatic cell nuclear transfer, which might provide the necessary stem cells - with an exact tissue match to the patient - to eradicate the disease from all its victims.

This was also the same Steven Teitelbaum who, along with Dr. Shane Smith of the Children’s Neurobiological Solutions Foundation and Dr. William Neaves of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, had debunked that false list of “65 diseases successfully treated by adult stem cells” perpetrated by David Prentice of the Family Research Council. The debunking had been published in the peer reviewed journal Science just prior to the U.S. Senate’s HR810 debate.

Like many others, Steven and I had exchanged emails and spoken on the phone but, again, we had never met. I walked over and introduced myself. I was taken by surprise when he thanked me for my work. My work? Here I was speaking to a man who found ways to cure fatal disease. I was in awe of his work and he had thanked me for mine? I was honored and humbled, but confident that somehow the planets had momentarily misaligned and the world had been turned inside out for a brief instance.

As we chatted, he asked if I had read the news about the latest work on diabetes, just published in the last couple of weeks. I hadn’t. He explained that scientists had developed a way to create pancreatic cells but, more importantly, to do it efficiently. He relayed how important this step was toward curing diabetes. And he spoke of the work with the enthusiasm of a teenager relating how his favorite baseball player just won a game with a walk-off homer.

After more conversation, we agreed to meet for lunch to get to know each other better, see what we could do to grow the pro-cures movement and keep it motivated and mobilized beyond this election.

And on it went, revisiting with so many I had met along the way, as well as meeting some for the first time; those who had worked so hard to keep embryonic stem cell research in the hands of scientists and shielded from the fanatic ideology of a few extremist legislators.

But there was an undercurrent of concern. The early returns had us losing - and not by just a point or two. We were down substantially. We watched the opposition’s gathering on the monitors as the news media reported their basking in the glow of those early numbers, tilted heavily in their favor. While we knew that our strength would come from St. Louis City, St. Louis County and Kansas City, the urban areas that would be the last to be reported, we silently wondered if we would garner enough majority from those precincts to overcome the now large deficit that had amassed in the rural areas.

At 10:30 pm, Zelda and I left to attend the McCaskill victory event.

- Jeff Eisen

Continue to Part VII