# 393 Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - DON'T BE FLIM-FLAMMED!
The Greatest Lift I Never Made, or: How the Opposition is Using an Embryonic Stem Cell Advance to Try and Shut Us Down
Folks, the opposition is trying to use what may (or may not) be a legitimate stem cell success to shut down embryonic and SCNT research. They must not succeed.
This coming Friday, November 30, I urge you to read our column, and to share it. Friday's essay, "Arguing with the Church" is what for me this issue is all about censorship of research, which we must never allow.
But first, here is something fun, which makes the point Friday's essay will do in depth. (It is followed by an up-to-date sketch of where the states are in terms of funding stem cell research.)
I loved the sport of Olympic weightlifting, though I was never great, not even close. My best lift overhead was a 345 pound clean and jerk. That is a lot for us ordinary mortals, about like a fully-loaded refrigerator.
But the World Record at the time was a hundred fifty pounds more, 486 ½ pounds, done by Bob Bednarski, who weighed less than my somewhat pudgy 260, but who was all functional muscle and a athletic genius, like Joe Montana, or Babe Ruth.
But the greatest weight I ever moved was 635 pounds and I lost a contest in so doing.
Do you know what a power rack is? Visualize an anchored framework with adjustable (inch-thick) "pins" to slide in and out, so that a lifter's bar could be supported in a stable position at varying heights. It is used for assistance exercises, where the athlete moves the weight just a couple inches, to strengthen the body in a particular part of the lift.
You see power racks in serious weightlifting gyms, where the power and Olympic lifters play, no cutesy machines or shiny little dumbbells, but genuine heavy iron.
You moved the empty bar to the height you wanted, set the pins, then add as much weight as you wanted to pile on. The bar was safe, could be moved from that point upward only-- and would not come crashing to the floor if you failed.
Now, my friend Bill Starr, a Cherokee Indian weightlifter, was built exactly like Conan the Barbarian in the Marvel comic books drawn by John Buscema and Ernie Chan. He was just crawling with muscle and no fat whatsover. He weighed 220 right then, at around 5'10", and word "chiseled musculature" is about as close I can describe this physical phenomenon.
But he had one small but important physical flaw. He could not quite straighten his arms. It was just the way his bones were set, nothing to do with having too much bicep muscle, or any nonsense like that. He could run like a deer, play racketball at top speed, was superbly coordinated but those elbows would not lock. He had to hold weights overhead on sheer muscle, while the rest of us could just straighten our arms and the last part (for us) was easy, bone on bone, just weight support.
This was a weakness for Bill and he set out to strengthen it with the power rack, holding the weight overhead in a stable position, just moving it a few inches.
He came in one day, all excited.
"I did 500 in the lockouts," he said, sitting down at his desk in the office we shared. (We edited a weightlifting magazine, STRENGTH
I could not help wondering, if maybe I could do that too because my arms did lock. It was just an accident of birth, no accomplishment on my part, but they would straighten out all the way, so I could support a goodly amount of weight overhead, without much effort.
Now whenever Starr and I competed, (and we used to have lifting wars over blueberry super high protein icecream milkshakes lifting wars straining our guts out for a few delicious calories-- he always had to spot me a hundred pounds or so.
But not this time. In this one exercise, because of our differing bone structure, we could compete as equals, straight on, no spot, no handicap, just go for it.
"I did 525", I said smugly next day.
"Bullcorn", said Starr, by way of profanity.
The battle was on. We set the date and time and stakes. I owed him three blueberry milk shakes already this was double or nothing.
It was the lunch workout, a serious event at the York Barbell Club in those days. People came from all across the country to train with us, or just to sit and watch the giant people lift.
Today the action was not on the twin lifting platforms, but on the side, at the power rack.
One foot forward, one foot back, we took our positions under the bar, arms overhead but our feet positioned like a fencer's lunge; this was the make or break position for the ultimate lift in competition, the clean and jerk, the way the most weight can be moved overhead.
The bar was set at about 8 feet to win you had to push it off the pins and hold it long enough to indicate control no tricks, no balance, no coordination or timing just set yourself and strain your guts out.
We were young in the best shape of our lives. Starr looked like Hercules; I was large but smooth, like the Pillsbury Doughboy if he went on a diet.
Starr did 550 I did 575.
Starr muscled up 590 I managed 605.
Then Bill moved 630 pounds, so much the bar was quite literally bending from the strain, and the weightplates on both sides had to have collars or they would have slid off.
I took five pounds more, 635 pounds, strained so hard I literally blacked out for a second and almost fell gathered my energies, walked back and forth, chalked up my hands, breathed, went to the bathroom, did everything but raise my arms to Odin and cry out for a lightning bolt then I stepped under the bar, left foot forward, right foot back and shoved.
635 pounds. It was the greatest lift of my life. It was, I felt certain, a victory.
But Bill Starr picked up a tiny little weight plate, an itty-bitty dust-covered one I had never seen in use before, the smallest made--a 1 ¼ pound disk. It looked like a nickel with a hole in it.
He slipped the single weight on. Just the one.
"But that's not fair! You can't put a weight on only one side," I spluttered.
"Where does it say that in the rulebook?" he said.
It took him three tries to make it, but at last there it was, shaking till the weight plates rattled in their collars, but indisputably up there.
I attempted 640, the next logical poundage, but did not come close. I could not even make it vibrate on the rack.
I paid off his lousy six blueberry super high protein milkshakes eventually-- but I might have won!
I have replayed this many times in my brain.
What I could have done, and should have done was to pick up a piece of weightlifter'
But mentally, I was defeated by the maneuver with the single weightplate.
I got sidetracked on if it was legal or not, and it broke my concentration.
Folks, we who support full stem cell research must not let this happen to us.
We must not let this business with the Induced Pluripotency Stem cells get us all flustered.
The opposition is trying to use that one (apparent) success as an alternate strategy to make us sit by while they block embryonic and SCNT stem cell research which would be the stupidest mistake we could possibly make.
Friday's column is called "Arguing with the Church". It might be important.
I urge you to join Karen Miner and me this Friday, right here at the website, www.stemcellbattles
And now, here is the promised state update, well worth repeating.
Compiled by Don C. Reed, (and friends Karen Miner and Diane Wyshack) who would also like to express the following opinion:
As someone who worked daily with Russ Oster in the last two months of the New Jersey Stem Cell Research Bond Act, I feel the measure failed for the following reasons:
There was no serious campaign budget (barely half a million dollars!), the Catholic Church's violation of the separation of church and state was enormous, and the timing was unfortunate.
And now I will get off my soapbox!
Don
STATE
- The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM)'s $3,000,000,000 over ten years is the largest source of embryonic stem cell research funding in the world. By early spring of 2008, the CIRM will have dedicated approximately $450 million to training, infrastructure, facilities and embryonic stem cell grants. In a small way,
California
Connecticut
Indiana Indiana University
Illinois
Iowa University ofIowa
Maryland
Massachusetts University ofMassachusetts
New Jersey
New Mexico
-
New York
Ohio
Texas University ofTexas
Washington
Wisconsin
Don Reed
www.stemcellbattles
Don C. Reed is co-chair (with Karen Miner) of Californians for Cures, and writes for their web blog, www.stemcellbattles
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