July 1, 2025
The Little Engine in Wisconsin
Jake Beckstrom
Do you remember the story called “The Little Engine That Could”? It’s a folktale about a small locomotive attempting to pull a train over a tremendous mountain. And despite the steep track, the little engine repeats the motto, “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can!” Eventually, it successfully reaches the highest and hardest and toughest part of the climb at the top of the mountain before coasting down the other side.
Our Wisconsin CAN advocates have long had the mentality of The Little Engine That Could. And right now, we are at the toughest but highest point in our journey so far. Fortunately, we may have just received a big break.
Last week, one of the Wisconsin legislature’s most devout naysayers to our bill, Sen. André Jacque, reached out to us and offered an amendment that would remove the use of embryonic stem cells from any of our scientific studies. Fortunately, the state of SCI research these days is well past embryonic stem cells and focuses much more on induced pluripotent stem cells, which are derived from the adult individual patient themselves, rather than from an embryo.
Source: Embryonic Stem Cells: Controversy, Mechanisms, and Safety (2023). dvcstem.com
Once we agreed to include his amendment, Sen. Jacque flipped from a No to a Yes! Not only that, he told us he will reach out to his other Republican colleagues in the Senate who are No’s, and thinks at least two more will change their mind with this amendment included.
That means the small handful of holdout senators is growing smaller yet!
Rather than asking you to contact all of these holdout legislators today, we’ve decided it will be more effective to focus on one of these small handful of holdout senators per week.
This week, I am asking you to contact Sen. John Jagler. He has only ever scheduled one or two meetings with our WI Cure Advocacy Network advocates from my multiple meeting requests. And those meetings we did have were not even held recently this session, but a few years ago.
Please tell Sen. Jagler the following:
"Sen. Jagler - Please support our Spinal Cord Injury Research Grant Bill (SB99) which now includes the Jacque Amendment preventing the use of embryonic stem cells. This amendment was added by your Republican colleague, André Jacque, who now supports SB99!"
As always, please share this message with anyone you know. Ask them to call and email Sen. Jagler - no matter what state they live in - to ask him to support SB99!
Soon, instead of saying “I think we can.” We will all be saying, “We KNOW we can!”
Thank you!
