Biden Stem Cell Low Blow

Dumb move: Senator Joe Biden has implied that Sarah Palin doesn’t care as much as he does about special needs children because she does not support embryonic stem cell research. From the story:

“I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy...and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect,” he said. “Well, guess what folks? If you care about it, why don’t you support stem cell research?”

The Obama campaign denied that Biden’s barb was aimed at Sarah Palin, but who else gave a speech mentioning special needs kids in the last two weeks?

The McCain campaign struck back:

“Barack Obama’s running mate sunk to a new low today launching an offensive debate over who cares more about special needs children,” McCain-Palin spokesman Ben Porritt said. “Playing politics with this issue is disturbing and indicative of a desperate campaign.”

We haven’t heard much from the CURES!CURES! CURES! crowd in this campaign, primarily I think, due to the success of IPSCs and the failure to obtain FDA approval for human trials using traditional ESCRs due to the danger of tissue rejection and tumor formation. Indeed, at least for now, I believe the issue has lost all resonance.

Had such a slime ball been hurled a year or two ago, it might have been different. But this kind of “you don’t care about suffering people if you oppose federal funding of ESCR” demagoguery is long past its shelf life. Talk about the need for change!