for embryonic stem cell research and gave him a hate-love relationship with the Christian community, died Sunday of heart failure, his family and publicist announced Monday, October 11.
Reeve died at age 52 after he fell into a coma Saturday, October 9, after going into cardiac arrest while at his New York home during treatment for an infected pressure wound. He passed away in Northern Westchester Hospital on Sunday afternoon without regaining consciousness, publicist Wesley Combs told reporters.
In a statement released via news agencies, Reeve’s wife Dana thanked "the millions of fans around the world who have supported and loved my husband over the years."
Reeve, confined to a wheelchair since his riding accident in 1995, had in recent years campaigned for the rights of the disabled and for stepped-up research into the treatment of spinal cord injuries with embryonic stem cells.
The campaign lead to a row with the Catholic church in 2002 when he told.
Britain’s Guardian newspaper that the Catholic Church and President George W. Bush obstructed research he believed could free him – and others like him – from their wheelchairs.
EMBRYONIC ROW
Christopher Reeve with wife Dana and son Matthew last year at medical fund raising diner in
Reeve said Bush – who is not Catholic – had been paying too much attention to the views of the Catholic church. "There are religious groups – the Jehovah’s Witness, I believe – who think it’s a sin to have a blood transfusion. Well, what if the president for some reason decided to listen to them, instead of to the Catholics, which is the group he really listens to in making his decisions about embryonic stem cell research?" said Reeve at the time.
"If we’d had full government support, full government funding for aggressive research using embryonic stem cells from the moment they were first isolated, at the University of Wisconsin in the winter of 1998 – I don’t think it unreasonable to speculate that we might be in human trials by now," he added. "I think we could have been much further along with scientific research than we actually are."
He later apologized to the Catholic Church and reportedly said he would "never criticize anyone for being a practicing Catholic, nor would I tolerate criticism against me for being a practicing Unitarian."
Evangelical Christians also criticized Reeve. In a commentary for Christianity Today magazine last year, Charles Colson condemned Reeve for having said at a Congress hearing that he thought it was "the job of the government to do the greatest good for the greatest number," regarding embryonic stem cells research.
"GREATEST GOOD"
Reeve was "asking taxpayers to spend millions on research to treat spinal cord injuries". Colson noted. "Given that vastly more Americans need immunizations than a cure for paralysis, wouldn’t a "greatest good" policy mean spending scarce research funds on immunizations instead of paralysis research?
Colson said it reminded him to the teachings of Princeton philosopher Peter Singer who he alleged "scorns traditional teachings about the sanctity of human life, believing that some people—encephalitic babies, for example—are not actually "persons."
"He argues that parents should be allowed to kill their handicapped newborns (a healthy replacement baby would live a happier life), and favors euthanasia for sick and elderly people who have lost the basic capacity for mental functioning and who create a burden on others. This is the "greatest good" philosophy that Christopher Reeve espouses," Colson added.
ROLE PRAISED
At the same time some Evangelical Christians have also praised Reeve’s role as Superman, saying his films had a hidden Christian message about Jesus who came as a man to earth to safe the world from sin. Jesus also knew the suffering of men.
"As far as I’m concerned there is Superman and then there’s Christopher Reeve, and I’m not interested in having them merge," the actor is known to have said when asked about the significance of the role.
"What I’m interested in is acting…I’ve been working since I was fourteen; I studied at Juilliard. I wasn’t Superman before and I don’t plan to be Superman after."
While that role came to symbolize his acting career, he also showed another side of himself when he returned to directing and acting, three years after he broke his neck in May 1995 when he was thrown from his horse during an equestrian competition in Culpeper, Virginia.
THOUGHTS MATTER
In a 1998 production of "Rear Window," a modern update of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller, he played a man in a wheelchair who becomes convinced a neighbor has been murdered. Reeve won a Screen Actors Guild award for best actor in a television movie or miniseries.
"I was surprised to find that if I really concentrated, and just let the thoughts happen, that they would read on my face. With so many close-ups, I knew that my every thought would count," he said.
Reeve is survived by his parents, Barbara Johnson and Franklin Reeve, his brother Benjamin Reeve, his wife Dana and their son Will, as well as by two children from a former relationship, Matthew and Alexandra.
