Matt may not want to get maudlin; I'm more than happy to do so.

I was 4 when the original Superman movie came out. I don't know if I saw it at the time, though I've since seen it many times. Two years later, though, Superman took on General Zod and his cohorts and that's the movie that's burned in my memory. The Eiffel Tower. Saving Lois at Niagra falls (without revealing his powers). Sacrificing his powers so he can be with Lois. And sacrificing Lois so he can save the world from the Phantom Zone villains.

You can take your Kirk Allyns and your George Reeveses. For me, there was only one man who brought to life the nobility and the playfulness, the strength and the whimsy, the power and the compassion that is Superman. Thank you, Christopher Reeve.

I'm not going to get political about this. I swear, I'm not.

Really.

I'm not.

Oh hell...you know I am. Damn you to hell, Mr. Bush and your science-repressing ways. You bastard, you killed Superman.

Damn you.

Christopher Reeve brought depth and dignity to a role that a lot of actors (especially playing off Gene Hackman and Ned Beatty) would have done ultra-straight. Forget believing a man could fly -- I believed a man could act! That "transformation" scene in Lois' apartment was straight from the Curt Swan style sheet!

One way or another, everybody who's worked on any incarnation of Superman in the past generation has had to live up to Christopher Reeve's performance.

Please don't bring politics into this. First, even if embryonic stem cell research might one day help someone like Reeves, it certainly would not have saved him by this time.

Second, it seems mainly non-scientists are claiming embryonic stem cell research can help in cases like this and with Alzheimer patients like Ronald Reagan. Many scientists are not convinced that embryonic stem cell research will lead to these discoveries because of issues of the host rejecting them. The future may actually lie with research on somatic stem cells or adult stem cells that do not deal with the moral issues involved with embryonic stem cell research. The idea that embryonic stem cell research is a panacea is false.

People who oppose embryonic stem cell research are not anti-science, but simply wary of the idea that it is alright to conceive human beings simply to harvest genetic material and then discard them. Put that way, it sounds more like a horror movie than the march of progress.

We should remember that despite the wealth of medical information obtained from the experiments of Nazis like Dr Mengele, the medical community thought that the methods used to obtain such information so vile that they willingly never used them. We should be very careful before naively going down that road.

This is an extremely complicated issue that requires a great deal of scientific and medical knowledge. Knowledge which I do not possess and I think most of us don't either. I am very wary that the Hollywood types are pushing this when they obviously lack this knowledge.

Remember: send your angry cards and letters to...

Well, while I am a giant liberal (have been ever since that space capsule I was in was exposed to that kryptonite meteor crashing into that other radioactive one, causing me to grow to tremendous size and emit kryptonite radiation from my eyes) I don't know that we can lay this one at Bush's feet. Yes, Bush can be seen as wrong-headed on stem cell research, but even had we been gung ho on it for years now, Reeve might well have sustained the systemic infection that lead to his heart attack.

I guess what I'm saying is, I wanted to make a Titano reference and possibly to defuse any back and forth political sniping before it starts: I think no matter your political affiliation or lack of same, you can respect Reeve's accomplishments. I don't like the casual dismissal of his work in this area as 'Hollywood types are pushing this when they obviously lack this knowledge' because quite frankly, he made it his business to have that knowlegde, both for his own use and for that of others. This clearly wasn't Sean Penn flying into Baghdad here.

I don't want to see one of the other Howlers feeling this thread needs to be closed. If the issue of embryonic stem cell research and Reeve's role in it is to be debated here, please try and avoid sniping or ad hominem attacks. I'm not saying anyone had engaged in any as yet, I just want to avoid them in a thread that was intended to be about gratitude for someone who has passed and who in his own way helped contribute to comic books.

Regarding the morality of certain scientific procedures, I think it is necessary to keep in mind that for centuries simple dissection of the human body was similarly taboo. Who knows how future generations will view the current debate?

Regarding Reeve, the extremely limited functionality he was able to recover was remarkable. He embodied Superman like no other actor has embodied any other superhero character.

But Matt--what d'you think of Somewhere in Time?

Dave

I think this says it all.

Chris (Durnell), I think politics is already a part of this whether we'd like it to be or not. You can argue that a thread memorializing Christopher Reeve may or may not be the most appropriate place to talk about stem cells, but given that Reeve was an ardent and tireless advocate for stem cell research I don't think it's out of bounds - although I do hope any discussion would be as respectful as the somber occasion warrants.

You raise some good points about the possible utility of embryonic stem cells. They probably won't be a panacea, although just because they may not have helped Ronald Reagan or Christopher Reeve in time doesn't mean it isn't worth pursuing the research to treat other diseases and ailments.

Other points seem more hyperbolic. I don't know how useful Mengele's experiments were to the medical community (some of the experiments I've seen footage of, at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, would seem to be of no use to anyone who isn't a sociopath and a sadist), but mentioning him in this context is a grotesque overstatement and an attempt to create guilt by association. If I have a problem with the local highway construction, I don't mention that Hitler built the Autobahn.

There's also an important misconception in your comments that I'd like to address: the idea that "People who oppose embryonic stem cell research are not anti-science, but simply wary of the idea that it is alright to conceive human beings simply to harvest genetic material and then discard them. Put that way, it sounds more like a horror movie than the march of progress."

Embryonic stem cell research does not at any point conceive human beings simply to harvest genetic material. Embryonic stem cells come from surplus embryos that are created as a byproduct of in vitro fertilization. The fertilization is conducted to help infertile couples conceive; the resulting embryonic stem cells, if not used for research or for other infertile couples, are otherwise destroyed anyway.

No life is being created or destroyed, and nothing is being created that would not otherwise be destroyed anyway; the embryonic stem cells are byproducts of a process that exists to treat infertility. For more information, check out this site. ("...And your local library!")

Finally, I share Matt's discomfort at the easy dismissal of Reeve as one of those uninformed "Hollywood types." First of all, as Matt said, he made it his business to have that knowledge (probably moreso than anyone here has it), and embryonic stem cell research was obviously more than just an academic concern for him. I have the highest respect for what he did after his accident, not just personally but politically.

In addition to being a fine actor, he was a really funny guy; check out his turns in otherwise crap movies like Noises Off and Switching Channels. And his appearances in Smallville made that show exponentially better. Cheers, Chris.

First, it didn't even occur to me that my comments on the "Hollywood types" might even apply to Christopher Reeve. Strange, but true. I was commenting on the high profile celebrities that show up on this issue, not someone who was crippled. I apologize if anyone was offended thinking that I was attacking Reeves.

Second, while some well known internet debate rules involves never bringing up the Nazi's, sometimes references are worthwhile. While the experiments of the Nazis were sadistic, they accumulated a great deal of medical knowledge on what the human body could survive. The Nazis did controlled experiments to uncover information that could only be hapharzardly collected in emergency rooms.

Want to know what happens to a human body in a vacuum? That information is worthwhile to people involved in space travel. The Nazis knew. But it was sealed after the war. There's lots of other potential benefits from that kind of knowledge that can be used to save lives. How many people died because that knowledge was sealed? I don't know. But the medical community sealed it anyway.

It's an ethical dilemma. So is embryonic stem cell research.

Marc brings up a good point about how those excess stem cells would be discarded anyway, but it obscures two issues. One is whether what the in vitro people are doing is ethically right in the first place. Another is that if embryonic stem cell research is allowed, it is quite easy for the biomedical business firms to begin growing embryos for specifically that process anyway. Third is that the question of whether embryos is life cannot be assumed. A lot of people would argue against that life is not being created. And the logic behind, well, these people will die anyway, is quite chilling when put another way.

If you don't think that can happen, I can point out the recent news about how certain European countries went from assisted-suicide laws to doctors deciding they can euthanize patients even without their permission. There is a slippery slope here.

So if you hate me now, what did you think of the South Park episode that had Christopher Reeves sucking the marrow out of babies to regain the use of his limbs?

So Matt, what about Titano?

I'll be glad when we go back to how badly Brian Michael Bendis is destroying the Avengers franchise.

Well, Chris, I think we can all agree that Bendis isn't doing a very good job with Avengers.

I don't feel particularly qualified to argue whether the creation of embryos as a fertility option is morally justified or not: I do think that if we're going to make that illegal, we're going to have to seriously consider how we as a society have pushed child-rearing back into the mid-30's and if we want to make it harder for people to have children, which doesn't have much to do with the stem cell debate. As long as the embryos are being destroyed because there is no place to implant them (and we don't want women attempting to give birth to litters of children, if only for the increased chances of death to those women) then to my mind harvesting the stem cells is no worse a choice than not harvesting them, but I can understand why someone would feel differently. (I don't view unimplanted embryos as viable life, and won't until we get those artifical wombs ready.)

I didn't see that South Park. I probably wouldn't have liked it, but I don't hate you because we disagree on this. (I did think you were specifically slamming Reeve in your 'Hollywood types' comment, but I accept that you weren't.)

My Titano reference was the whole 'two meteors slamming into each other' deal. I've always loved that as an origin... the fact that it turned Titano from a chimp into a giant gorilla with kryptonite vision has always amused me, and the attempt to retcon it into a STAR labs accident has never been as amusing or cool in my mind. Space capsule meteor impact is the way to go for Titano.

By the way, and this isn't a direct challenge to your use of the Nazi example, but my grandfather was a US Army doctor who went into many of the camps, and worked to help assemble and decipher the lab notes for experiments much like the ones you mention. I can safely say that one of the horrors of his life was, like it or not, he did learn from them, as well as from treating the after-effects... when he was near death, he told my father and myself (he was raving) that he'd not have been half the doctor he was if not for his time in the war.

There is a gross distortion of the truth that I feel I have to address here:

"I think we can all agree that Bendis isn't doing a very good job with Avengers."

Matt, how dare you just dismiss Ralf Haring like that?

Okay, now that that unpleasantness is out of the way...

Chris, you're right that embryonic stem cells and Nazi experimentation may both raise ethical issues, but that hardly makes them equivalent or even comparable as you have now twice implied. By this logic, almost any ethical dilemma could be compared to Mengele. Once again, this smacks of creating guilt by assocation - a very broad and tenuous association.

Regarding Bendis' Avengers....

you should probably start a different thread. ;-)

Okay, Christopher Reeve was an okay actor whose advocacy for research into the plight of the handicapped was self-severing.

Sorry, had to get that off my chest. I mean, if Reeve is so great, then what are we to make of Paul Newman who has raised millions of dollars for charity through his Hole-in-Wall charity?

As to stem cells...

We are not the only country in the world that does medical research, and arguably we aren't even the best at it. Other countries are hard at work on their Nobel Prizes.

We can assume that Newman is also a good person. Maybe he's even a better person than Reeve, if you need to have a hierarchy of 'good deeds' to 'potential benefit to self'. It's been argued that all philanthropy and charitiable work is self-serving because those that participate in it get a euphoric rush, like a rat pushing a button in a lab to get an electic spark to his pleasure center: I don't think that would invalidate it were it true, either.

Look, where does this obsession with putting a dead man in his place come from? I'm tempted to link to the recent John Byrne post about heroism, but since I didn't say Reeve was a hero in the first place, I won't... but I don't get why people feel the need to say 'bah, he only wanted a cure for himself' about Reeve.

I don't recall in my post saying anything particularly extraordinary about Reeve other than that he was a fine actor who did a good job playing Superman and that he did fairly well with the hand life dealt him. Saying "he was selfish' because he advocated for a cause that, had he succeeded, would have kept him from dying the way he did (the particular kind of infection that caused his heart failure is one particularly common among the paralyzed): frankly, I don't understand it.

I could sit here and list the various charities he worked on before the fall, including risking his own ass by going to South America to work as an election monitor, but it's not really the point. Reeve played Superman, did a good job, and now he's dead, that was all I'd said about him. When I die, I hope people don't feel the need to point out all my selfish actions.

It's also worth noting that Reeve surely realized that the odds were microscopic that his efforts (or anyone else's) would lead to a cure or significant treatment for paralysis in what remained of his lifetime. As such, the idea that he was somehow out for his own benefit seems ludicrous to me.

I've been thinking about this since I read Mike's comment, which is a far more reasonable and polite statement than the ones I think I'm really reacting to, the ones like Maddox's screed (you can find it online, I'm not going to help) or the Byrne post about Heroism (which, for Byrne, was also fairly mild and inoffensive) and so I wanted to come back and spell out what I'm thinking on the issue, which I really never addressed in the original post.

Is Chris Reeve to be commended for his actions in working against spinal injuries, since he was a spinal injury sufferer himself? Personally, my answer is yes. Personal benefit doesn't mitigate the good someone does or tries to do, even if (as Chris puts it above) the odds are microscopic that there actually will be any personal benefit from your actions. I'd be inclined to believe that the cause was, more than anything, an idee fixe to keep Reeve motivated to go on in the face of his debilitation, but I wasn't there and I can't with any credibility psychoanalyze the man.

There's an old phrase, 'enlightened self-interest', that I think gets overused and overemphasized and overly relied on in many situations, but when it comes to charitable works, it's an interesting one to consider. When one sets up, say, a public literacy foundation one is working towards the establishment of a future with less illiteracy in it, and this is in essence a selfish act, since you will benefit from such a future. In essence all charitable acts can be seen as selfish from this vantage point, working towards a better future includes, one would hope, the person who works for it as well. You may never see this better future (as Reeve did not) but if it comes about and you're still here, you'll benefit too. If anything, I find this a perfectly reasonable ideal and one that doesn't in any way invalidate someone's good works, just as I would not find it any less commendable if someone wrestled the controls of an aircraft out of the hands of a hijacker and landed it himself just because he was saving his own life in the process.

Is it selfish to want to be able to walk again? Okay, I'll cop to that. It's selfish. It's a selfishness I think we can all understand, and it's a far better use of that selfishness than allowing yourself to be mired in self-pity for the rest of your life, and its a selfishness that may well benefit many people who are alive now and who haven't even been born yet, so to me, it fills the bill as far as enlightened self-interest goes and is still worthy of praise. We're all selfish: Reeve did something with his selfishness.

Chris: Actually, chances are looking reasonably good that Reeve's type of injury will see significant progress in the next decade or so. Of course, that's been the case for at least five years, so who knows.

Matt: Well, whadya want? I'm a curmudgeon :) I have the same reaction to Michael J. Fox. He is trying to get help for Parkinson's Disease. There's a shocker. Now, look at Muhammud Ali. He suffers from a disease which is either Parkinson's or puglistic dementia, and he campaigns for that, but he campaigns for other stuff too. He personally got Saddam Hussein to release 15 hostages back during the first Gulf War. Or what about Jerry Lewis, who had been campaigning for muscular dystrophy for decades now, and as far as anyone knows has no personal stake at all.

Or how about Danny Thomas? He founded St. Jude's Children Hospital, one of the premiere research hospitals in the world, and one of the places I routinely donate some money to. He founded this hospital for no particular reason other than as a way to give back some of his own good fortune to the world. (And the hosptial was primarily funded at the start by by Thomas' Arab-American buddies, so up yours, Shrubbie.) Take a look at http://www.stjude.org if you don't believe me.

Mike, I think I addressed your point on Reeve vs other charitable celebrities above, but to take it even further, he campaigned for plenty of causes aside from Paralysis, putting him into the same situation as Muhammad Ali by your count. I don't disbelieve you, I just don't agree with you. (I know about Danny Thomas because I might well not be alive without him... I was born exceedingly premature and many of the techniques used to keep me alive when I was born were developed at St. Judes.) I'm not going to keep score in this case: I could sit here and list Reeve's actors foundation, his work in voter reform, etc, etc, but I don't think it changes anything.

Muhammad Ali is pretty cool, though.

And he beat up Superman, so therefore...?