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The 4-year-old from Verona, Wis., needs three to four insulin shots a day to keep her Type I diabetes in check and endures twice as many finger pricks to check her blood sugar levels.
“Maddy is a trooper,” her mother, Jodi Montgomery, said Friday to Democratic State Convention delegates. “But I would give up everything to get her a cure.”
She believes stem cell research might provide that cure. And she thinks Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle is the one who will keep that research going in Wisconsin.
While Doyle identified numerous issues he supports — providing better educational opportunities for all children, protecting a women’s right to choose, not raising taxes and accessible health insurance for all — his re-affirmed his commitment to keeping Wisconsin a leader in stem cell research during his keynote speech.
“I will never let partisan politics slam the door on hope for these families,” he said. “We will find the cures for these awful diseases. And we should be so proud to be from the state that’s leading the way.”
Doyle will face Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Green in the Nov. 7 general election. Green issued a press release Friday afternoon accusing Democrats of using “human suffering for crass partisan political gain.”
While Green opposes human cloning and expanding embryonic stem cell research beyond the more than 60
lines established before August 2001, the release noted he supports adult stem cell and umbilical cord blood stem cell research.
Doyle has vetoed legislation that would ban human cloning in Wisconsin. After the veto, Doyle said he opposes cloning humans but thought the legislation could stop all forms of stem cell research.
