StemCellsChina.com
Fill out my online form.
Weitere Neuigkeiten
| China Hope |
 |
 |
| Research | |||
| Sonntag, 10. Dezember 2006 um 08:00 Uhr | |||
|
There are no translations available. Source: Toronto Sun By Thane Burnett There is a lot of heavy baggage which goes along with taking brave chances. This morning, at 5:30 a.m., the Deering sisters — accompanied by an entourage of two nurses, their mom and dad, wheelchairs and at least eight suitcases and several huge, over-stuffed boxes — are expected to be dropped off at Pearson’s Terminal 1. They will then patiently wait for an Air Canada flight, bound for China — and hope. Everything they’ve worked towards — all the things they both wish to someday become — takes flight today. The Port Perry girls — 21-year-old Shannon and 18-year-old Erica — were both paralysed in a 2004 car crash. Their tragic tale — sisters who look so much like twins sharing broken backs and severe limitations which horribly mirror one another — is well known to many Canadians. Family, friends and more than 1,000 strangers have — with their bare hands or with their donated dollars — helped the girls make today’s trip to Shenzhen, China, and experimental umbilical cord stem cell surgery which waits for them there. In the weeks to come, they will each receive five injections of millions of stem cells which will be pushed into their spinal cord fluid. Once inside, the theory is the incredible building blocks will migrate to the damaged areas of the girls’ crippled backs — promised magic bullets designed by God and delivered by man. While Chinese doctors do not believe the stem cells which are injected actually become new cells, they theorize that they give signals to the body to repair itself. At least in small but important ways. A little more control. A little less pain. A move in the right direction of being better again. It is unproven. But it’s also — if testimonies from other patients can be counted — a new frontier of science that we have just begun to tap into. Questioned by many western doctors and amazingly expensive — the journey, in total, will cost $128,000 — the month-long therapy will make the sisters medical pioneers. They are among a growing advance party of westerners not willing to wait for their own health system to give a stamp of full approval. Instead, they are trying first-hand what is largely the domain of lab mice and carefully controlled test subjects in Canada. They themselves are becoming lay experts in the ever changing definition of “stem cell” — a complex bit of universal biology that’s been turned, in good faith and in confusion, into a political and ethical dilemma. But even explorers need provisions. And the somewhat odd list of what is included in the Deering sisters’ suitcases and boxes speaks volumes about their unconfined youth, their loves and their broken parts. Their father, Tony, has made sure to bring along a pocket translator and the normal electrical converters. Pictures of friends But Shannon — a past baseball star who is in charge of keeping track of all the packed items — has double-checked her iPod. On it are pictures of all her friends and her cousin’s baby, who she adores. “We’ve also had to pack a plunger,” Shannon explained earlier this week, searching for the long-handled toilet tool as she spoke to me. “We’ve been warned some of the toilets don’t have much power. ” There are also two feather comforters which stick out of one large carton. A hard bed can mean a nightmare for girls who spend days and nights off their feet. As well as bottled water — enough to get the girls used to local taps in China — there’s enough instant oatmeal to remind them of breakfast at home. Plastic forks will mean they won’t have to — with weak hands — try chopsticks. Then there’s the large bottle of Heinz ketchup. Erica puts it on almost everything — including once on ice cream, after a dare from her older sister. “One I was never paid for,” she said, glaring at Shannon. There will not be any Christmas gifts wedged among the medical equipment and devices they need. Though they won’t return to Canada until mid-January, there isn’t any more room. “The best present is that we would get results,” said Tony. They will do without something else as of today. Tony has all but banned doubts or worries of what happens if something goes wrong. They are beyond that, and he now only wants his girls to boldly go with only certainty in their hearts and possibilities held waiting in their impaired limbs — including weak fingers they both hope will soon be strong again to tightly squeeze a boyfriend’s hand. If the donations are any clue, a large number of Canadians believe they are doing the right thing today. The money came from coast to coast, and beyond — from as far away as Britain and the Bahamas. It came from children. It came from a funeral where the family requested donations to the Deerings rather than flowers for a loved one. It was collected by students at Bluevale Collegiate Institute in Waterloo. And from Don Cherry. A pancake breakfast and from employees at a hair salon. It came from Elayne and Dick Merritt in Barrie, whose son, David, hit a moose in 2004, but — by fate or a higher power — managed to leave hospital standing with two canes. Not as fortunate While in recovery, they saw others who were not as fortunate as he was. In their note to the sisters, David’s parents wrote: “We would never assume to know everything you have gone through to bring you to this point today, but we do appreciate the bravery you are showing to undertake this procedure.” Canada has a stellar record in stem cell research and discovery. Most of the important papers on the subject have come from our scientists. We are, in many ways, the birthplace of the science. But among the heavy baggage are questions about whether — as Canadians head to the other side of the world for help — the life-saving and future-changing work here is taking place quickly enough. Most Canadian scientists, researchers and doctors defend the pace of clinical trials and lengthy experimentation, which is going on in labs and hospitals across the country — from stem cells culled from cadavers in Edmonton to amazing advances in repairing damaged lung tissue under way in Toronto and Montreal to a Calgary bioreactor which can grow human neural stem cells in the lab. If all this science is proven safe and effective, it’s only a matter of time before it’s available for everyone, they point out. “Nature is in charge here,” explained Dr. Alan Bernstein, president of the Canadian Institute of Health Research, the federal funding agency for stem cell research. “When you get into these new areas of science … the respected norm is that people publish results in peer-reviewed journals,” Bernstein, a respected stem cell researcher, added. ‘People make claims’ Saying he couldn’t talk specifically about the Chinese operations, he noted: “There are so many examples in medicine where people make claims ... that are not substantiated.” There are still hurdles of process and protocols and documentation before we really know what stem cells can do — or not do — to repair everything from broken backs to brains, he said. The Deering sisters aren’t waiting for that day to come. Today is their day. At 8:30 a.m., on an outbound plane, they will go looking for a future. No amount of baggage — their physical limits, the debates and lingering questions of the medical community in Canada or even the need to tote along a plunger — seems enough to stop them from rising up.
|
|||
| Zuletzt aktualisiert am Mittwoch, 13. Dezember 2006 um 17:51 Uhr |