BULLY PULPIT

In his quest for cure, he's been roundly criticized by a large and vocal sector of disability activists for obscuring our core message of rights, equal opportunity and dignity.

Alas, poor Christopher Reeve. He can do no wrong.

In his quest for cure, he's raised millions of dollars for research, elevated public awareness for all people with disabilities and brought hope where once there was none. He's become Saint Christopher and there's not much his detractors can do about it.

Alas, poor Charles Krauthammer. He's had quite enough.

"His Super Bowl ad was just too much," he wrote in an essay reprinted by Time on February 14. Reeve's latest offense was a commercial for an investment company showing a computer-generated image of him walking.

Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist, 22-year quadriplegic and psychiatrist (by training but not by trade), dusted off his medical credentials to dismiss Reeve's promised cure as 1) distant, not imminent, 2) potentially helpful only to the newly injured, not the old guard and 3) partial, not full-body, in its benefits. Not a get-up-and-walk cure at all. Reeve, he wrote, promotes a fantasy. The commercial was "disgracefully misleading."

Krauthammer wasn't alone. Activists lined up to bash the Reeve commercial, and no more charitably. It was a "pseudo-miracle" (Mona Hughes), a "digital deception" (Laura Hershey), a "hurtful delusion" (Paul Longmore). "I desperately want the cure to happen," wrote physiatrist Catherine Britell, "and hope is a good thing. But unrealistic hope can paralyze a person more completely than a spinal cord injury."

Krauthammer met a flood of accord, although even some of his strongest supporters took issue with his attributing our improved status over the years to technology rather than the disability rights movement. But in equal measure--and just like Reeve--he drew censure.

Krauthammer, wrote seminal cure enthusiast Kent Waldrep on SpineWire.com, lacks the credentials--but not the gall--to judge the present state of cure research. Krauthammer's criticism of Reeve, said Waldrep, is an example of today's media in which "no good deed will go unpunished." And where was Charles, Waldrep asks, when the laws that gave us our rights were fought for and enacted? Evidently not in the same trench as Kent.

"Would you want to tell your son or daughter to give up hope of ever walking or enjoying life again?" asked a man whose 14-year-old son had recently became paraplegic. "I don't think so." (Let's set aside, for the moment, the prudence of equating walking with life enjoyment.)

So we're left to make our own choices: Reeve or Krauthammer? Fantasy or reality? Cure or social issues? Or do we have more options than that? Must one camp inevitably compete for needed resources to the exclusion of the other, or have we matured enough politically to mount a two- (or even three or four) front effort? Can we have both, and might each camp learn to reinforce the other? I think we should try.

Alas, poor editor, he can do no right.

--Barry Corbet