Tom Owens reports for the Newton, Iowa, Times-Republican on a campaign stop by John Edwards:

"We will do stem cell research," he vowed. "We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases. America just lost a great champion for this cause in Christopher Reeve. People like Chris Reeve will get out of their wheelchairs and walk again with stem cell research."

Erik Baard of The Village Voice lists one of ten reasons why "George W. Bush Ain't No Cowboy":

As for the elderly, Bush is catering to his religious-right constituents by blocking stem cell research to fight Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

The Guardian warns that Bush is, further, a moron driven by blind adherence to "theology":

His theological antagonism to stem cell research and his conviction that "the jury is still out on evolution" alienates the university scientific community.

And Charles Krauthammer, though he might rise from his wheelchair because of the Kerry-Edwards ticket's wonder-working powers, explains in Time (on Aug. 16) why he's not buying it:

There's nothing less compassionate than to construct a political constituency of sufferers (and their loved ones) by falsely and cruelly intimating that their disease is on the very cusp of cure if only the President would stop playing politics with the issue. Why, after all, was [Ron] Reagan addressing the nation on a subject of which he knows nothing? Because his famous father died of Alzheimer's, and some (including, sadly, Nancy Reagan) have been led to believe that Alzheimer's is curable using stem cells. This is nonsense. Cynical nonsense. Or as Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem-cell researcher at the National Institutes of Health, admitted candidly to the Washington Post, a fiction: "People need a fairy tale." Yet Kerry began his radio address with the disgraceful claim that the stem-cell "ban" is standing in the way of an Alzheimer's cure.

Photo credit: Dave Scull, Kerry-Edwards 2004 Inc.