STEM CELL BATTLES

Hi, Folks!

 

I have to write a long article (3,000 words) for the magazine section of Bernie Siegel’s LAB AT THE LAKE World Stem Cell Summit (the don’t-miss event of the year), so today’s column is part one of that effort—old friends need not suffer through it!

 

Oh, today is also another hearing on SB 1565, wish us luck in defeating it!

 

Now, onto the article, part one:

 

HOW TO PASS A STEM CELL LAW

By Don C. Reed

 

“Free Advice costs nothing,” said comedian Alan King, “—and it’s worth the price!”

For whatever it can be worth, here is my free advice: five tips on how to pass a stem cell law.

 

TIP ONE: Choose your champion. Very different but outstanding leaders led the five laws I helped pass in California: Assemblyman John Dutra was gentle, kind, and indomitable. He refused to accept defeat when the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act of 1999 was shot down twice. He persisted, and because he would not give up, California became the first state to fund embryonic stem cell research in America.

Advanced stem cell research? Senator Deborah Ortiz was explosive, passionate: an inspirational flame that lit the path for generations to come. Her three laws established official permission for research on embryonic stem cells and Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, as well as establishing a registry to keep track of stem cell lines, and a committee to study and keep track of the effort.

Robert N. Klein is a man almost beyond reckoning. Like Lincoln, his true worth is too large to understand immediately: three billion dollars for research? And the money was only the beginning, because the bill—Proposition 71, the shining star of our effort-- had to be defended every step of the way, and the battle still goes on.

There are no duplicates for champions like these. They set the bar too high. But if you want to pass a law, you will find somebody tough and knowledgeable, whom you will help. That means sending emails, letters, and phone calls to all your representatives at the local, state or national level, hunting until you find someone willing and able—and you won’t know that till you find him or her!

 

TIP TWO: Personalize everything. Remember the old teacher rule: no generalization without an example. If you say, spinal cord injury, people say what? If you say, Christopher Reeve, Superman, paralyzed movie star, then you have everyone’s attention. Statistics are wonderful, but people are motivated by people.

When you say one hundred million Americans with a chronic disease or disability, that is too big. Say it, but then immediately follow with something like: but these are not statistics, but members of your family and mine, our loved ones.

 For me, it is easy. I talk about my son. If you get stuck in an elevator with me, and it’s more than one floor, you will almost certainly hear the story of Roman Reed, and the terrible football accident that injured his spine, and how California passed a law named after him—and how, on March 1, 2002, I held in my hand a rat which had been paralyzed, but which walked again, thanks to embryonic stem cell research.

 

TIP THREE:  Find conservative allies. We cannot let this be a liberal versus conservative, science versus religion situation: we need the faith and business communities on our side.

One great place to make friends is business groups. Business groups are full of intelligent leaders: the reachable conservatives. They are aware that biomedicine contains vast potential, for companies that are the economic lifeline of our country—and they also have families, and they care about easing suffering and saving lives.

Rotary clubs need speakers once a week when they meet, so you are just about guaranteed a chance to speak. Go there, eat a nice lunch, talk about stem cell research. Take their questions, prepare for their concerns. If they ask a question you do not know, just say I don’t know that one, I will get back to you. (Take their email address.) Be endlessly polite, but insist on accuracy. You will always find one or two opponents in every group, and you will have to correct them gently when they mischaracterize the research—sorry, SCNT is cells, cells, nothing but cells—and keep in mind, the person you are trying to reach is not the objector, but the people listening while you argue. If the arguer is a jerk, they already know that, but he/she is their jerk, so disagree gently with the horse’s ass.

Your speech will always have carryover value.  When you speak before a business group, you may also influence the local churches.  Many of the same folks sit on boards for both business and communities of faith organizations. It is a whole lot tougher for a church to attack stem cell research if its board of directors—the folks who fight for the Church’s funding—have been briefed on what is really at stake.

Listener Sam might be a Catholic, whose leadership opposes our research. But if Sam is also a Rotarian, and he heard you speak about your daughter Catherine who has type one diabetes, and how Stanford University is working to use embryonic stem cells to try and find an answer—Sam might be part of the 72% of American Catholics who support esc!

 

TIP FOUR: Make it easy for supporters to write tons of letters. Most people do not write letters to the editor or to their legislators primarily because they think they cannot.

But everyone can write one sentence, true? Particularly if it already written for them…

So, offer them your handy-dandy One-Sentence Letter Writing Kit.

Here it is, the one-sentence form letter that works for all occasions.

   I….. support/oppose……

That’s it. Plug in the name of the person and the bill and that is the whole thing.  If they want to add something, they can. And they usually do, once they get started. With the foundation in place, most folks will almost certainly add a sentence or two, about why they care, their loved one who has cancer or Alzheimer’s.

But one sentence is literally all you need for a letter to a legislator. Generally speaking,  letters from constituents are read by legislative aides, who keep track of support or opposition on their leader’s positions. An aide will generally read no further in the letter than to find out where the constituent stands. (The sentence).

A letter to the editor begins the same way. Add your personal involvement, and the local paper will almost certainly print it.

And tell your friends this: even an unprinted letter to the editor packs a wallop—it has impact because it educates the editors…

 

TIP FIVE: Back to the Eighth Grade. For big results, write small.  Re-read the preceding sentence, please, and check out the size of the words. “For big results, write small.” Only the word “results” had more than one syllable.

This matters. The average human being processes information at the eighth grade level. This is no insult to him or her: just reality. If you explain to me how your car works, you might want to go back a little bit earlier than that—well, actually, a whole lot earlier—okay, start with the part that says, a car has four wheels, which go round and round.

This is how people are. The specialized information you and I took years to learn cannot be given to anybody in the words we now know—think back to when you first began learning about this stuff.

My first spinal cord injury conference, I could not understand the scientists at all. I felt like Gary Larson’s “Far Side” cartoon dog who understands only one word of human: his name, which happens to be Rex. The human is yelling at Rex, for digging up the roses, and all Rex hears is his name—Rex, blah blah, Rex—I only understood three words—spinal cord injury, and I would wait for them. In between, I would nod off because my small brain went into overload.

So, have mercy on your listeners.

P.S. Here’s one more, but it’s my favorite.

 

TIP SIX: One hundred rocks…

Think of our struggle as like turning over rocks. You’ve  got a hundred rocks, and under one of them is a piece of gold, but which one? So, you have to turn them all over.

Knowing this insulates us from the agony of failure—okay, that one did not work, let’s try the next ninety-nine—because under one of those rocks is something vital, which may change the lives of those we love.

Like today. In a couple hours, I will be on the road to Sacramento, my fifth hearing to fight against Senate Bill 1565. The committee chair is probably not going to help us. I spoke at a conference with him, and he took a stand in support of SB 1565, so of course I had to give the other side, explaining why the bill would be a disaster.

Today will almost certainly not be the gold under the rock.

But there will be other rocks to turn. Because after this committee, comes Assemblyman Jay Leno’s Appropriations committee, and he is a strong stem cell supporter.

The rocks are there, waiting.  If we will just keep turning them over, one day there will be something shining, in our hands….

Our day will come.

 

Assembly Appropriations Committee Members           District  Phone   E-mail

Mark Leno - Chair           Dem-13  (916) 319-2013   Assemblymember.leno@assembly.ca.gov

Mimi Walters-Vice ChairRep-73 916) 319-2073    Assemblymember.walters@assembly.ca.gov

Anna M. Caballero          Dem-28(916) 319-2028   Assemblymember.Caballero@assembly.ca.gov

Mike Davis                   Dem-48  (916) 319-2048   Assemblymember.Davis@assembly.ca.gov

Mark DeSaulnier           Dem-11  (916) 319-2011   Assemblymember.DeSaulnier@assembly.ca.gov

Bill Emmerson               Rep-63  (916) 319-2063   Assemblymember.emmerson@assembly.ca.gov

Warren T. Furutani        Dem-55  (916) 319-2055   Assemblymember.Furutani@assembly.ca.gov

Jared Huffman              Dem-6   (916) 319-2006   Assemblymember.Huffman@assembly.ca.gov

Betty Karnette               Dem-54  (916) 319-2054   Assemblymember.Karnette@assembly.ca.gov

Paul Krekorian              Dem-43  (916) 319-2043   Assemblymember.Krekorian@assembly.ca.gov

Doug La Malfa               Rep-2    (916) 319-2002   Assemblymember.lamalfa@assembly.ca.gov

Ted W. Lieu                 Dem-53  (916) 319-2053   Assemblymember.Lieu@assembly.ca.gov

Fiona Ma                     Dem-12  (916) 319-2012   Assemblymember.Ma@assembly.ca.gov

Alan Nakanishi              Rep-10  (916) 319-2010   Assemblymember.nakanishi@assembly.ca.gov

Pedro Nava                  Dem-35  (916) 319-2035   Assemblymember.nava@assembly.ca.gov

Sharon Runner              Rep-36  (916) 319-2036   Assemblywoman.Runner@assembly.ca.gov

Jose Solorio                 Dem-69  (916) 319-2069   Assemblymember.solorio@assembly.ca.gov