The Washington Post
Embryos Of Hope
By Richard Cohen
Thursday, June 28, 2001; Page A33

If George W. Bush reads just one book this summer, I hope it is
"Saving Milly." This is Morton Kondracke's account of his wife's
battle with Parkinson's disease and his own transformation from
a self-described careerist with more drive than talent to a mensch
who has achieved greatness in this one book alone. I finished it
last night in tears.

I suppose I should put my cards on the table. I have known Mort
since even before he was a regular on "The McLaughlin Group."
I know Milly, too. I know the publisher of this book best of all.
He sent me an early version months ago. I did not read it. I did not
want to read it. I did not want to read about Milly disintegrating.
My friend persisted. Read it, he said -- and sent another book.
Finally, for reasons of my own, I did.

Those reasons have to do with stem cell research. Stem cells are
derived from embryos that are five days old. These cells have
a special quality. They can develop into almost any cell in the
human body and, theoretically, can be used to repair any tissue
or organ -- heart, nerves, you name it. To use the cells, though,
requires killing the embryo.

To some people, the embryo is life. Simple. You had conception
and you got life. This is the view held by President Bush, not to
mention many -- but not all -- abortion opponents. The president
has repeated it many times, and he has said nothing recently
to suggest he has changed his mind. In the meantime,
his administration is going through the motions of studying
whether the federal government should fund stem cell research.
Much of the scientific community says it should.

Make no mistake about it, this is not the easiest of decisions.
It is complicated ethically and medically since, among other things,
stem cells can also be derived from adult tissue. Great claims have
been made for these adult cells, but the preponderance of medical
opinion is that the embryonic cells offer the best hope for curing
diseases. One of those diseases is Parkinson's.

So I read Mort's book. I read about Milly's unstoppable decline --
how at first she had trouble signing her name, then walking, then
talking, eating, turning over in bed, standing, drinking, controlling
her bowels. I read, in both shock and wonder, of Mort washing her,
changing her, feeding her, clearing food out of her clogged throat
and, through it all, loving her -- completely, physically. I read an
account of a love so huge that I shrank before it:
Could I do the same?

It has been years since I've seen Milly. It has been years since
she cornered me in the kitchen of her house and told me off for
ignoring her. Mort writes about that in his book. I had forgotten
the incident, but not her energy, her intelligence, the way she
was on my case for a long time afterward -- and her eyes.
The former Millicent Martinez is a magnificent mongrel -- half
Mexican (her father), half Jewish (her mother) and totally
communist (both parents). I was messing with the genuine article.

Like a virus, this exotic woman punctured the conventional
Kondracke's Brooks Brothers membrane, insinuating herself
into his life. She turned order into mayhem, their home into a dorm
and challenged his reflexive respect for authority. It was the
government, after all, that deported her father for his radical politics.
She saw him off at the train station and within days he was dead
of a heart attack. Milly was 10.

There'll be no happy ending here. There's no optimistic, chipper
hero here. Milly is depressed. She wants to die. She also wants
to live. Sometimes Mort is in a rage. They have discussed suicide,
assisted suicide, the method and circumstances of her death.
On a given page, this book is almost unbearably candid. Mort
even admits that he thinks sometimes of other women and of life
after Milly. But Mort loves Milly and, if you read his book,
so will you.

This is why I want Bush to read the book. It will get him close
to someone with Parkinson's. Maybe he'll come to love Milly,
not as Mort does, of course, but in the way I did while reading
Mort's book. So when the president decides about stem cell
research and what, after all, the term pro-life has to mean, it will
not just be from briefing books or the cold counsel of aides
worrying about the antiabortion vote, but from what Mort has
written about Milly -- her face, its expression frozen, looking out
from the pages of this extraordinary work. No research can save
her. No reader can forget her.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55053-2001Jun27.html

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