By Hilary White
TRENTON, New Jersey, November 6, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Michael J. Fox, who suffers from severe Parkinson’s disease, continues his advocacy for the use of living human beings for research as New Jersey considers a ballot initiative that would fund more experimentation on human embryos. After the massive success of similar emotionally charged ads that appeared last year in the mid-term elections in Missouri supporting that state’s Amendment 2, Fox has appeared in television ads in New Jersey asking voters to support borrowing $450 million for research.
The ads were funded with a US $150,000 grant to a lobbying organization, New Jersey for Hope. In one of two spots, Fox tells viewers, “New Jersey voters have a chance to do what our president won’t do, and fund stem cell research to give hope to millions of Americans.” President George W. Bush received plaudits from pro-life advocates for refusing to allow federal funding to create new stem cell lines and has opposed attempts to legalize human cloning.
Fox’s Missouri television ads helped that state’s anti-life lobbyists pass Amendment 2 at the November 7 elections. A vigorous campaign of public education by Missouri’s pro-life advocates that showed the lack of success of cloning and embryo research brought the vote down to a razor-thin margin 51-49 per cent.
The New Jersey ads from Michael J. Fox are being countered by others featuring a retired policeman, Steve McDonald, who is asking the state’s voters to remember that embryo research has yet to produce any concrete medical results. McDonald was left paralyzed from the neck down after being shot while on duty as a New York city detective.
“A lot of politicians,” McDonald says in the ads, “many of whom are Democrats like me, say that harvesting embryos will help me walk again, hold my son in my arms and hold my wife again. So-called foetal tissue research has not produced one cure, not one.”
The popular former star of Family Ties and the Back to the Future films, has also lent his name to support for the use of tissue from aborted children, saying in 2000, “This is tissue and cells that are going to be thrown away.”
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Missouri Cloning Fight Not Over Yet say Pro-life Legislators
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/nov/06111007.html
Sad to see Michael J. Fox Suffer But Sadder Still that he’s been Deceived on Embryo Research
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/nov/06110106.html