Correspondence
Correspondence CALL ME IMPRESSED AS A KARL ROVE ENTHUSIAST, I enjoyed reading Fred Barnes's take on his role in the White House thus far ("The Impresario," August 20/August 27). Barnes can say...
...FATHER GREGORY SCHWEERS Irving, TX OVERSEXED I FOUND THE ARTICLE by Andrew Ferguson on David Satcher and sex education one of the best I have ever read ("Sex Talk," August 6), but I was taken aback by one assertion: that no studies show that sex education increases sexual activity in exposed children...
...Where in heaven's name did the researchers get their control group...
...As the "good character" people slowly leave us, the "no character" people replace them in society...
...He has surrounded himself with incredibly competent people...
...That's why I was taken aback by his piece "The Great Stem Cell Hoax" (August 20/August 27...
...Do No Harm, a D.C.-based coalition that opposes use of embryonic stem cells, notes over 30 different anti-cancer uses for adult stem cells, all tested on humans and all appearing in peer-reviewed medical literature...
...Hamlet in purgatory only reflects that mankind can't let deceased people we are influenced by go...
...that has been obvious from President Bush's days as governor...
...Rove's influence in this administration is great, but that is the way President Bush governs...
...They hope to begin human trials this year...
...I think all of mankind is haunted by Hamlet...
...I predict that some of the wonderful stem cell therapies that will tremendously alleviate human suffering will receive regulatory approval for general use not in 50 years but within five...
...The hoax is the claim that only embryonic stem cells promise so much so soon...
...It's too early to say whether the new cells are actually building tissue, but Osiris Therapeutics in Baltimore has rebuilt cardiac tissue in damaged pig hearts (pig hearts are the closest to ours) as well as those of rodents...
...This latter is undoubtedly a consciously sought goal of some, such as Peter Singer, who see man as but one more species, unfairly privileged, and a rather bothersome one when in the form of a disabled infant or an infirm elderly person...
...If morality and character are taught in the home by parents who care, as opposed to parents who pay someone else to take care of their responsibilities, then we will evolve back into a society that is morally responsible...
...We are lurching toward a "post-human future," and it is so important that a journal such as yours remains an "anti-Brave-New-Worlder" voice— even if it becomes a voice in the wilderness...
...Kids were no longer taught "good character," and 30 years later, the current state of things is what we have to show for it...
...And I assure you that there has been an increase in sexual activity and a decrease in the age at which it starts...
...BARBARA HARTY-GOLDER Sarasota, FL...
...It is very refreshing after eight years to have someone who will answer questions and take the lead rather than avoid everybody, wait for the political winds to take shape, and then respond...
...Rove is more than a political adviser...
...Further, Do No Harm lists about 100 non-embryonic stem cell experiments on animals that have shown success against every disease Krauthammer names, including Parkinson's, diabetes, Alzheimer's, paralysis, and many more...
...But it is an end not seen by the countless numbers of people who are too intellectually lazy to think about these matters in more depth than is presented them by CNN or the Today show...
...The liberals are playing politics as usual, and Barnes makes that very clear...
...Those who claim that stem cell therapy can "end human suffering" are as cracked as any utopian...
...Rove is on the front lines...
...Modex Therapeutics of Switzerland is in the second of a three-phase human trial to grow skin grafts from stem cells found in hair follicles...
...Growing up in the fifties, we all felt we needed to display "good character" because society demanded it, and therefore our parents taught us about good character...
...No matter the hue and cry, this is at the root of any discussion, and hopefully Leon Kass and his oversight panel will address this indispensable part of the stem cell debate...
...While both respectful and critical of Robert Hollander's efforts, Valiunas places Dante's work in the larger context of Western cultural ideas...
...If we start working on this today, we should expect to see a return of "good character" in our society around 2035...
...Granted, some moral lessons may be learned in schools...
...After children reach school age, they are sent off to "Liberal Training Institutes," otherwise known as public schools...
...After all, therapeutic stem cell use in bone marrow transplants has been common since the early 1990s...
...On the other hand, balding and impo-tency remedies were snake oil for thousands of years...
...Lab animal physiology isn't so different from our own as to assume that many of these results won't translate into results for humans...
...Krauthammer is correct to point out that the history of medical research is a history of hype...
...Taught by words, just like math or history, and taught by example...
...MATTHEW WEIDMAN Middleville, MI CONCERNING WILLIAM BENNETT and Edwin J. Delattre's "Character, the Old-Fashioned Way," they are right that schools can't have a course on character, but they fail to mention the real way character is formed: It's taught by a two-parent family...
...Recent studies have shown that adults can benefit from umbilical cord cells as well as children, even when cells are not closely matched...
...Thirty-six patients with diabetic ulcers have already benefited, and regulatory approval could come next year...
...The dead influence the living, because many of us are dependent instead of truly independent...
...It's not Greenblatt's being haunted by Hamlet, but Hamlet's haunting Greenblatt...
...MARY MCDEVITT Redwood City, CA MY SPECIAL THANKS TO William Kristol for his editorial "Stemming the Tide" (August 20/August 27...
...Lewis's phrase, the abolition of man...
...JIM HOWL Phoenix, AZ HAUNTING HAMLET STEPHEN GREENBLATT haunted by Hamlet ("Fathers and Sons," August 20/August 27...
...ROBERT CHARLES MITCHELL II Sacramento, CA FALSE HOAX IF THERE WERE a Charles Krauthammer fan club, I would be a gold star member...
...Children today are so saturated with "informal" sex education—from the television show Friends to JC Penney jeans ads—that the bit of formal "sexuality education" they get in school is so insignificant it is no wonder it doesn't register as statistically significant...
...Articles and editorials of the sort that The Weekly Standard has been publishing invite readers to look at these issues more deeply and seriously, and so are an invaluable source of reason and truth amidst what John Paul Il's The Gospel of Life calls the "crisis of culture, which generates skepticism in relation to the very foundations of knowledge and ethics, and which makes it increasingly difficult to grasp clearly the meaning of what man is, the meaning of his rights and duties...
...As he does, I ask where the pro-life groups are...
...Almost everybody then had good character—kids, parents, athletes, politicians, employees, and employers...
...He may be making policy and directing the way the administration goes, but he is also on the front lines taking the brunt of whatever decision is made on a given day...
...Shakespeare's classic is replayed in our lives over and over again...
...Now there exist FDA-approved medicines for these ailments...
...Unlike other media sources, whose coverage of and commentary on such matters are shaped by a kind of tendentious pragmatism and a relativistic ethic, The Weekly Standard's articles on recent events and trends display a profound understanding of what is at stake here—no less than, as you have put it, using C.S...
...As a high school literature teacher who's been teaching Dante for 17 years, I shall eagerly encourage my students to read this review of the Hollander translation we'll be using this term...
...In July, surgeons at the University of Rostock successfully transplanted marrow stem cells into a heart attack patient...
...Rove is nowhere near as slimy as Carville is and was...
...Who can forget the "War on Cancer...
...In it he repeatedly asserts the idea that "stem cells are the cure of the mid 21st century...
...Only one thing will: a cultural renaissance of the two-parent family and society's insistence that it remain intact...
...There's no good news for the immediate future...
...Barnes can say what he wants about Karl Rove's being nothing like James Carville, and he is right...
...I particularly enjoyed his citation from Nietzsche—one of Dante's most vociferous critics—and how that citation so fittingly describes the great intellectual divide that reading the Commedia evokes...
...Sadly, that ended about 1970 when the two-parent family started to dissolve...
...Nothing the schools can do will help...
...If, however, you compare these kids with kids of a generation, or perhaps two, ago—before society was so sex-soaked— you might have a meaningful comparison...
...FRANCES WAUCK Park Ridge, IL FIERY INSIGHTS A FISTFUL OF BRAVOS to Algis Valiunas for his trenchant review of Robert and Jean Hollander's new translation of Dante's Inferno ("Ferocious Beauty," August 20/August 27...
...Children these days are sent off to day care and raised by individuals who often do not hold the same values as their parents...
...In the grand tradition of book reviews that look beyond the book critique narrowly conceived, Valiunas provides the reader with a consideration of the sweeping topics that Dante's Commedia, whole and entire, treats so beautifully...
...Umbilical cord stem cell therapy began in earnest a few years later, and now some 70 different diseases, primarily forms of leukemia, are treated with umbilical cord stem cells...
...But the media have been comparing Rove to Carville and George Stephanopoulos ever since Bush started to make his way to the national stage in 1999...
...In Rove we have someone who will answer the questions and not double talk us like the last White House occupants did...
...MICHAEL FUMENTO The Hudson Institute Washington, DC WILLIAM KRISTOL and THE WEEKLY STANDARD are to be commended for sustained and intelligent commentary on bioethical issues such as embryonic stem cell research and cloning...
...Kristol references the lack of consideration of the in vitro fertilization role in the entire embryonic stem cell discussion...
...STEVE PARKHURST San Antonio, TX HOME-GROWN CHARACTER WILLIAM BENNETT and Edwin J. Delattre's "Character, the Old-Fashioned Way" (August 20/August 27) could not have missed the bull's-eye any more if it tried...
...However, the majority of life lessons as well as morality should be taught in the home by responsible parents...
Vol. 6 • September 2001 • No. 48
