Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that Michael J. Fox suffers from Parkinson's disease and has been a staunch advocate of stem cell research. He recently did an ad for Missourian Claire McCaskill, who is running for Senate and who shares Fox's views on stem cell research. Fox, who is typically medicated to alleviate his uncontrollable body movements when he's on television, appears without his medication in this ad to drive home the point that he's talking about something very serious.* I typically tend to be apolitical most of the time, but I have to admit I'm just as biased as Fox is when it comes to this issue, and I found the ad to be very powerful. Then again, as Rush Limbaugh seems to think, Fox could just be acting. I know if I had a debilitating disease I would mock myself and everyone who suffered from it by "pretending" I had it. Yeah, that makes sense.
Update: Fox's ad for Ben Cardin of Maryland.
*The tremors Fox displays is actually a side effect of being on his medication. I made an assumption I shouldn't have made and apologize for the error.
1. My Mother had what they called Parkinson's plus, and I feel if there had been more research done she may have been able to live a better life. I support him with his fight to get stem cell research to help others. For him to be so young and have this really gets to me, my Mother was diagnosed at about 62 after a few years of problems. ANYTHING to help with this terrible disease would be great. As with cancer they think it would help..
Posted at 3:14PM on Oct 24th 2006 by Janice H