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| # 347 Wednesday, July 18 , 2007 - 50 SAMPLE LETTERS PLUS ONE: A LE |
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# 347 Wednesday, July 18 , 2007 - 50 SAMPLE LETTERS PLUS ONE: A LETTER-WRITING CAMPAIGN
Hi, Folks! Here are 50 sample stem cell letters to the editor, which may be useful. Would you skim through this, and try to think what I left out?
What key issues are unaddressed?
Also, should I divide the letters into categories? If so, what? Suggestions welcome. If you want to suggest a change within the body of the article, please do it IN CAPITAL LETTERS so it stands out. Thanks! Don
50 SAMPLE LETTERS PLUS ONE: A LETTER-WRITING CAMPAIGN PART 1: BASIC POLITICAL ACTION LETTER: We in the stem cell research community have to write two kinds of letters: action requests to key politicians and friends; and educational outreach to newspapers.
IMPORTANT: the key to your entire campaign is the ?ASK?, who you are and what you want accomplished. You must be able to say this in one sentence.
No matter what the campaign is, your ASK will always be something like:
As a _________ I urge your support for (or opposition to)____________.
That?s it; and that?s everything. When writing letters, emails, or phone calls to political leaders, the ASK may actually be the complete letter. For politicians, inundated by mail, the ASK is what they hunt for. If they can?t find it right away, they will trash the letter. No letter should ever go beyond one page. If you add backup documents, include them separately.
First, here is your basic political action letter.
KEY LETTER TO GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL
Your Name:
Your Address:
Your PHONE NUMBER: (don?t forget this)
Date:
Dear_______:
As (state your stem cell connection: father of a paralyzed young man, person with Parkinson?s disease, wife/husband/sister/brother/friend of a person with________),
I strongly urge your (YES/NO) vote on____________.
Thank you,
Your Name
PART TWO: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
At the end of this section, there will be fifty sample stem cell letters to the editor. Feel free to share these with local friends, to build their own letters to the editor.
A successful letter to the editor is political dynamite; it stands for votes. Senators and Representatives (or their staff) who read these systematically.
The ASK is still the core of your message, but it must be contained in a discussion of an issue
Be interesting! Make the editor of the newspaper care about your issue.
Train yourself to ?look for hooks? in the news, something everyone is talking about, which may have even the slightest relation to our issue.
Immediately under your contact information, the title of the letter follows: something to catch the eye, a surprise, like:
STEM CELLS FOR PARIS HILTON?
Then, wherever possible, hook your letter to something recent in the newspaper. When you can do this, put the title of the article, author, and date, like this:
RE: ?Paris Hilton vows to be ?new person? ?, Sam Smith, June 27, 2007
Then, the salutation and the letter itself, which can (must) be short. 150-350 words. Get to the point immediately: no padding.
Dear Editors:
How wonderful it would be if ?new person? Paris Hilton would use her celebrity to help the world: supporting stem cell research, for example.
Think what Ms. Hilton could do. She owns the media. If she interested herself in advancing stem cell research, she could bring millions of interested citizens to the cause, affecting the decisions of governments here and abroad, changing the course of history.
Paris Hilton could bring the world closer to the day when chronic disease and disability are no longer ?incurable??and take her name forever from the celebrity gossip file.
Thank you,
Your Name
What are your chances of success of being published? Excellent.
If you are a member of the local community and have not had a letter in that particular paper in the past six months, you are almost guaranteed publication. If you live out of the area, it will be tougher, but it can be done.
A lot depends on how jammed the letter box is that day.
Avoid personal attacks, no matter how angry you feel. Disagree strongly; that is our job. But state that ___________ is mistaken, not that he/she/it is personally evil. Such letters are generally ignored by editors, or, if printed, or may do actual damage, rallying the opposition. Wherever possible, take the high road. Point out an error in terms of regret, and explanation; set the record straight. Words like ?unfortunate? incorrect?? are useful. An attack must be answered firmly: but always leave a way back for the opposition?if they are crushed or humiliated, their friends will remember.
Remember, the reader we can reach is someone who has not quite made up his or her mind. We offer encouragement to come to our side, explain key issues, remove misunderstanding, point out falsehoods perpetrated by the opposition.
Think local: friends who live in the area you are trying to influence. Contact them, suggest a letter or two they might consider revamping to suit what is needed.
Below are fifty sample letters to the editor. Some are fully developed, others just ideas: They may be useful for language, as models or source material, or feel free to cut and paste and use some.
Above all, remember the only letter that matters is the one you actually send.
Even if it is not used, it will educate the editor who reads it, letting him/her know what the community thinks important.
1. ADULT STEM CELL ?TREATMENT? CLAIMS EXAGGERATED
Claiming that there are ?65 adult stem cell treatments? as _________ states is what I call a ?lawyer?s lie?, twisting the facts to prove a false point.
All forms of stem cell research deserve consideration, whether from adult, embryonic, or other avenues. But to claim adult stem cell research is so advanced that embryonic is not needed?or to imply that conditions like Parkinson?s or paralysis are actually cured-- that would be false indeed.
In ancient Rome, a scientist called Galen put pigeon dung on the spines of paralyzed gladiators. That might have been a ?treatment? but it was definitely not a cure.
This list was made up by an employee of a religious organization, and has been thoroughly discredited. The author of the list was a man called David Prentice, who works for the Family Research Council, one of the most powerful political lobbying organizations of the Religious Right. How valid is his work?
?By promoting the falsehood that adult stem cell treatments are already in general use for 65 diseases and injuries, Prentice and those who repeat his claims mislead laypeople and cruelly deceive patients,? the scientists wrote.? ?Washington Post, Rick Weiss, July 15, 2006.
2. GOD BLESS THE SCIENTISTS
In my prayers every night is a little special thank you for the scientists who are struggling to find cures through stem cell research.
These dedicated men and women have had to fight intolerance and misunderstanding, shortage of funds (or none at all), and even the threat of jail. (President Bush, for example, actually supports legislation which would imprison scientists for ten years for having anything to do with Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, sometimes called therapeutic cloning.)
But when cure is found, for paralysis or Parkinsons or any of the other supposedly ?incurable? diseases or disabilities, it will be found by scientists.
And that is why I say, God bless the scientists.
3. STEM CELLS: GOOD, AND GOOD BUSINESS
__________________ (state) should consider becoming a stem cell research business center.
There is a good reason why California?s stem cell research initiative (Prop 71, the $3 billion Stem Cells for Research and Cures Act) was so strongly supported by Chambers of Commerce up and down the state.
First, what could be better than curing diseases and chronic disabilities? Business leaders are family folks, and want to protect their loved ones same as we all do.
Stem cell research and biomedicine is a chance not only to advance the hopes for cure for suffering people across America, but also a source of new jobs and solid business.
When researchers have access to government funding, they develop products, and new businesses. First they are mom-and-pop business beginnings, then they may grow into biomedical giants, as is happening in California and New Jersey.
Related trades will develop, meaning new jobs. For example, as cures are developed for paralysis, there will be a huge need for physical therapists, hundreds of thousands of them, to help newly cured people re-develop their bodies.
Want to work in a solid emerging industry, with jobs that pay well, and that let you go home feeling proud at night?
Sometimes, good is good business.
4. STEM CELLS: FIGHT FOR OUR LOVED ONES!
Dear Editors:
_______________ (state) should set a positive example by__________________
Supporting stem cell research means to fight for our loved ones: our children, our parents, a beloved bride, a cherished husband: these are our families, and we must protect them.
And as we do, large states and small, our success will be imitated. Other states will follow our example.
Together, we are unstoppable.
5. STEM CELLS: THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING
Some presents are so wonderful, they enrich everyone?s lives?stem cell research is just such a gift.
Think what it would mean, if just one disease is cured?like Spinal Muscle Atrophy, (SMA) for example.
I know a family where the mother had to give up her entire career (she was a doctor) because her baby was diagnosed with SMA.
Now, her whole life revolves around protecting her child. Any cold can kill him. Many are the nights she spends beside his bedside, trying desperately to keep him alive.
What would a cure for SMA mean to her? Her baby safe?her life returned?
If cures are found, entire diseases will no longer need to be treated, saving uncountable billions; health care costs could be lowered, instead of like now, when (according to the Center for Chronic Disease) 75% of all medical expenses go to chronic (incurable) diseases.
There?s more: disease-specific stem cell lines developed through Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) will allow diseases to be studied in Petri dishes instead of patients: medicines can be tested on stem cell lines, cheaply instead of the present system involving expenditures of many hundreds of millions of dollars for just one new medication.
And the development of an entire new industry?stem cell research, the gift that keeps on giving.
6. DIAGNOSIS OF DISASTER: THE WORST DAY IN YOUR LIFE
Imagine the worst day of your life:
Imagine being told that you or your loved one has an incurable disease or injury: paralysis, ALS, diabetes, blindness, Alzheimer's, AIDS, Parkinsons? your life as you knew it, is over.
?There is no cure??? these terrifying words, a diagnosis of personal disaster, have been said to far too many individuals and families. It is time we started curing these conditions?but some politicians are in the way.
Imagine you are standing on a dock, and a child falls into the water. She can?t swim. But there is a coil of rope beside you, and you reach to throw it down?but a big foot stomps on the rope, and a voice says, you cannot use that particular kind of rope to rescue the drowning child?that would be ridiculous, wouldn?t it?
Yet that twisted logic is being used by anti-research politicians to block governmental funding of science which might literally save lives?threatened by incurable disease.
Pretending that a few cells are the same as a grown child, opponents of research are blocking life-saving research.
Such people do not deserve to be trusted in elected office.
Fortunately, Democracy gives us an avenue of change.
2008 is not so very far away.
7. STEM CELLS MAY LOWER HEALTH CARE COSTS
Dear Editor:
Estimates of national health care costs run as high as $2 trillion dollars?roughly as much as all federal income taxes combined?and roughly three-quarters of that staggering figure is due to chronic disease. (Center for the Prevention and Cure of Chronic Disease).
The only way to lower skyrocketing health care costs is cure?and cure is exactly what stem cell research is all about.
When research from our parents? generation cured polio, they not only saved lives and eased suffering, they also saved America an estimated $28 billion a year in health care costs. That?s $28 billion we don?t have to pay any more? not to mention we don?t have to see people in iron lungs, gasping out their lives in slow choking agony.
Angry about health care insurance we can?t afford?
Let your leaders know that you support stem cell research.
8. SMALL STATE OR LARGE, STEPS TO PROGRESS ADD UP
All across America, states big and little are taking up the challenge of stem cell research. We have had the great debate, and we are coming together.
The vast majority of our country agrees: stem cell research for cure should go forward.
We are blocked only by a small but powerful ideological minority, led by President Bush.
It might be unfortunate that we in the states have to do the work the Federal government should be doing, but it is a fact of life.
Unless we want to stand by and do nothing, we need to take steps, here and everywhere, uniting our state stem cell efforts.
After all, they don?t call us the United States for nothing!
9. PEOPLE WHO KNOW SUPPORT THE RESEARCH
If I am not sure of how to vote on something important, I look to who is behind it.
On medical matters, I want a doctor?s opinion. On scientific stuff, a scientist will do?and on decisions involving suffering patients, I want to hear their views as well.
Stem cell research is about using scientific advances to help doctors help patients.
More than 500 patient and medical groups support embryonic stem cell research. These are groups like the American Medical Association, the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, the Association of American Universities, and literally hundreds more.
Go to http://www.stemcellgo.com/escr-facts and look at the giant list?far too long to list here-- of supporters of embryonic stem cell research.
As Shakespeare said, we must ?take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.?
10. PARALYSIS RESEARCH: A REASON TO HOPE
Paralysis was once thought to be incurable.
On the walls of an Egyptian tomb is the first historical mention of spinal cord injury.
Of paralyzed soldiers, the pictograms read: ?Deny them water; let them die?there is nothing that can be done.?
Until just recently, that was the truth.
But now, thanks to stem cell research, we have hope. Scientists in several locations have used embryonic stem cells to give motion back to formerly paralyzed rats.
I hope your legislators will support _____________________so that our nation can move closer to cure for all chronic illness and injury.
12. RELIGIOUS OBJECTIONS TO STEM CELLS?
A person?s religious faith is private, and unassailable. It is, in short, none of my business. If your convictions forbid you to accept blood transfusions, or to take an x-ray, or to benefit from stem cell research or therapies, you have every right to refuse medical treatment.
But no one has the right to use their religion to forbid my family access to good medicine.
Fortunately, many religions already support stem cell research. Those which do not will probably change their minds. For example, the official position of the Catholic church is against embryonic stem cell research. However, most Catholic families (an estimated 72% support the miraculous little cells.
13. AMERICAN FREEDOM?FOR STEM CELL RESEARCHERS, TOO!
If I had to describe America in one word, there is no question in my mind what that word would be.
Freedom.
No other word so sums up not just America?s best, but the endless possibilities of all humankind.
It should also apply to stem cell research.
Unfortunately, there are politicians who would deny freedom to scientists when it comes to research for cure.
Believe it or not, President Bush supports a bill (authored by Sam Brownback) to jail scientists, doctors, patients (that?s right, patients!), and even parents, who have anything to do with SCNT, Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, an advanced form of stem cell research.
Jail for suffering people, their parents, and the doctors and scientists who are trying to heal them?
What could be more un-American?
14. MY LOVED ONE HAS CANCER
Have you seen what chemotherapy does to the person undergoing it? The hair loss, the weakness, the nausea? That is just the part that shows.
Consider that by killing the body?s immune system, the chemotherapy puts the patient into an AIDS-like state, where even a common cold can kill?because the body?s defenses are wiped out.
Probably you know someone who has cancer right now, or maybe even someone who has passed on from this tragically incurable disease.
But did you know that there are scientists working with embryonic stem cell research who have derived the cells which kill cancer in a healthy body?
Look up Dr. Dan Kaufman at the University of Minnesota. Here is a man who may have found the cure for cancer?but can he get funding for new embryonic stem cell lines to develop those cures?
Not as long as President Bush keeps vetoing the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act.
It is time for Republican leadership to start thinking more about the needs of America.
15. ONE HUNDRED MILLION AMERICANS
One out of three of us (in America alone) suffers from a disease or chronic injury that cannot be cured?except, perhaps, by stem cell therapies.
Folks, that is a lot of voters.
What if we tell our leaders, support stem cell research (and I mean really support, no phony pretend adult stem cell copouts)?or we find another party?
I think they would listen.
For me, there are a lot of issues where I don?t know enough to be sure.
But not this one.
Because that one of three Americans does not live in a vacuum. Everyone of those good people is a member of a family, and they too suffer.
Government support of full stem cell research is as non-negotiable as the Defense Department?and for the same reasons?to protect our loved ones.
Now we can argue about how many billions we can spend to develop stem cell research.
But any politician who wants to block the research is a threat to our families physical safety, and has no business being in office.
We can?t afford it? We can?t afford not to fund research to cure diseases, which are driving our country into the poorhouse.
16. DON?T SEND GOOD JOBS OUT OF STATE!
Every state has a right to the high-paying jobs and solid profits of biomedicine; don?t send them out of state.
Why should other states?and other countries?control this vital new industry?
In California, the biomedical industry is as important to the economy as aerospace?and that?s how it should be here, as well?do we not have sick people needing to be cured?
Just as there must be schools everywhere, because there are children to be taught, even so there must be biomedicine everywhere, developing cures for our beloved ill.
Not to mention there are useful careers here, for young people just starting out, or veteran professionals who can think and dream big, and catch the next great wave of business.
17. ?IT?S TOO LATE FOR ME?? HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO FIND A CURE?
?It?s too late for me? but the cure must be found.? Too often I have heard these sad?and noble?words.
They are said by a person and a family who had been ravaged by a disease or injury.
They hope nobody else has to go through the agony they endured every day.
Like ALS, ?Lou Gehrig?s disease?, which first destroys the body?s functions, and then slowly steals the life itself?it is not right that people should suffer like that.
How long will it take to find a cure? Nobody knows.
We can only know we will never find a cure unless we look: unless we free up our scientists and give them the funding to the job.
I don?t want noble acceptance; I want cure. And that?s why I support stem cell research.
18. 9/11 EVERY DAY?CHRONIC DISEASE MUST BE FOUGHT TOO
When 3,000 people died in the World Trade Center, America became a nation at war; mobilizing to a gigantic extent, pouring uncountable billions into military defense expenditures.
But 3,000 (or more!) people die every day from chronic disease?that?s 9/11 every day!
The Bush Administration is not funding new embryonic stem cell research?
It is time the federal government changed its tune to recognize an internal danger.
19. SCNT: TO LOWER THE COST OF MEDICINES
Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT, sometimes called therapeutic cloning) can grow lines of new stem cells which could be used to test new medicines, and lower health care costs for everyone.
Right now, it costs around one billion dollars to take a new drug through all the necessary tests to gain FDA approval. This is right, to keep everyone safe.
But if we could use a stem cell line to test new drugs on, we could find out quickly which ones were dangerous to human tissues. We could cut drug costs way down: by not wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on a medication dangerous for human use.
20. SCNT?WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT ISN?T
Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, (SCNT) sometimes called therapeutic cloning, is one of the most widely misunderstood medical advances in the world.
It has nothing to do with cloning babies.
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