Source: WREX

Video: Cassy Boyda’s Family Moves Toward Treatment

BELOIT (WREX)- At age 17 most girls are hanging out with friends or thinking about what to wear to the high school dance. But for one Beloit teen, to have all of that on the mind would just be a miracle.

Cassy Boyda was born with a rare disease called Optic Nerve Hypoplasia/Septo Optic Dyslpasia. For her entire life, doctors have told Cassy’s family there’s no way to treat her.

“We’ve been to every specialist. I traveled to the Mayo Clinic. We’ve had every blood test. We even had her tonsils taken out thinking maybe that was it,” said Pam Hottenstein, Cassy’s mother.

Cassy is completely blind, mentally challenged and because of a hormonal imbalance, she physically appears much younger than a teenager. She’s also prone to severe tantrums, not only hitting herself, but her mother as well. “When she’s hitting herself and crying, and attacking, she’ll tear down the walls,” Pam said. “The last few years have been hard, watching her hit herself and things like that.” Read the rest of this entry »

August 9^th Manchester, England – Sunday proved to be a beautiful sunny day in Manchester ideal for touring the historic city center. Instead 140 people came from all over the U.K., and even some from Denmark, not for leisure, but to learn about stem cells.

Most of the attendees travelled by car or by train from different cities around Great Britain and Northern Ireland in order to attend the first U.K. Stem Cell Awareness Rally. Darren Clarke, organizer of the event, modeled it after previous U.S. Stem Cell Awareness events, choosing Manchester as the location to bring it closer to Europe and the U.K.  From the size of the crowd, it was clear that stem cell therapy is a hot topic that many people are eager to know more about. Read the rest of this entry »

Source: NGNN

It would have been a normal question for a 12-year-old boy riding in the car with his dad. He was at that precarious age near the end of boyhood when rites of passage loom, and Braden Hart knew that he was only three years from being old enough to get a learner’s permit to drive.  And so he asked his dad if he’d be able to drive one day.

Braden’s dad, Brad Hart, could not lie to his son–the son that he loved endlessly, the son who had been diagnosed with optic nerve hypoplasia as an infant, the son who’d been told that while his sight wouldn’t get any worse, it would never be good enough for driving.

And so Brad Hart swallowed the pain lingering with the question, kept his foot on the pedal, and told his son that no, he wouldn’t be able to drive.

But Brad was wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

Manchester, England, July 31^st, 2009 – In what will be the Stem Cell Awareness Association’s  seventh awareness rally, past patients, interested physicians, and prospective patients will meet in Manchester to learn about stem cell technologies and discuss the various current treatments available throughout the world.

Stem cell advocate Darren Clarke is organizing the Manchester event.  Mr. Clarke became involved in stem cell advocacy early in his daughter, Dakota’s, life.  At three years old, Dakota became the first child from Britain and Ireland to be treated for septo-optic dysplasia (SOD) in China.  She was born blind but began to regain her vision just weeks into her stem cell treatment.  Her parents have been passionate stem cell advocates ever since. Read the rest of this entry »

Source: Long Island Press

Every weekend, 8-year-old Brianna Bermudez of Bay Shore sits behind a bright yellow table with a bucket of lemonade and a red vase on the corner of West Leila and Manhattan Avenues in South Tampa with her grandmother. Her roadside profits, nearing $4,000, would have sent most kids into early retirement from the lemonade business a long time ago. But Brianna has a much bigger goal in mind. At 50 cents per cup, she’s raising money for her 1-year-old brother, Bryce, born legally blind, to undergo a $50,000 procedure in China that could possibly, within weeks, let him see his sister’s face for the first time.

Regenerative medicine is making progress, and the possibility of growing human organs, repairing spinal injuries, reversing birth defects, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, autism, diabetes, and literally mending broken hearts, is moving rapidly from the realm of miracles and into the world of science. And with federal funding for stem cell research now restored, never has the potential been so great or the hopes so high for the millions of people who, in some way or another, have been told, “I’m sorry, there is nothing we can do.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Colorado Stem Cell Awareness Association Rally was a great success.  On June 13^th, more than 100 people gathered at Platt Park in Denver, CO.  Shel Morse, stem cell advocate and mother of Macie Morse, organized the day’s events.  Local support for the event came from the owners of Stella’s Coffee House Stan and Bernice Geels, whose daughter is slated to go to China for stem cell treatment.  Carol Peterson, whose grandson was the first non-Chinese to be treated for ONH, was also present to speak and meet with fellow stem cell advocates. Read the rest of this entry »