The treatment’s availability is extremely limited in the U.S. because there’s little scientific proof it works.

The result can be a classic battle, not unlike that which occurred in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, between desperate patients frustrated that therapeutic progress comes too slow and a medical establishment that insists there be ample evidence a therapy is safe and effective before making it widespread.

Read more at The Houston Chronicle.

The 37-year-old Melbourne mum had a stem cell transplant, which she believes has effectively cured her of multiple sclerosis.

urner, the first Victorian to have the controversial treatment in Australia, reckons it rebooted her immune system and that the crippling disease has already left her body.

More than 18,000 Australians have multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease with no cure, and Turner hoped her story would give others hope.

She said within days of her transplant at Canberra Hospital in November her pain vanished and she was able to walk long distances after two years of being wheelchair-bound.

“I just kept putting one foot in front of another,” she said. “It was a miracle, it was incredible, it was surreal.”

Read more at The Daily Telegraph.

He had learned in medical school that MS is an unpredictable, often disabling illness of the central nervous system.

Symptoms vary but can include blurred vision, fatigue, problems with co-ordination, speech and muscles, loss of balance, and paralysis.

Normandin figured time was on his side because normally MS progresses very slowly, but he was devastated to find out he had an extremely aggressive form of MS, and he would likely be using a wheelchair within months.

Thankfully, he was fast-tracked for a cutting edge, experimental treatment: a bone marrow stem-cell transplant.

The procedure is not without risk — It is fatal in five per cent of cases because of the toxic chemotherapy drugs used to prepare a patient to receive a stem-cell transplant.

Read more at The Montreal Gazette.

IN the last two months, two news items that made international headlines were linked by the themes of stem cells and hope.

Dr Robert Trossel started to give stem cell injections to patients with multiple sclerosis about a decade ago. This was and still is unproven therapy.

Dr Trossel’s practices were highlighted in a BBC Newsnight investigation in 2006. The following year, he was suspended by the General Medical Council (GMC). A hearing of the GMC fitness to practise panel said that Dr Trossel had exaggerated the benefits of stem cell treatment based on “anecdotal and aspirational information”.

Finally, the GMC took the decision to strike off Dr. Trossel from the medical register for giving false hope to desperate patients, charging thousands of pounds for “pointless” and “unjustifiable” stem cell treatments. Dr Trossel can no longer practise medicine in the UK.

False hope. Is there any other kind? Is hope overrated? To some, it is the only thing to live for. They may go along with Oliver Goldsmith, who said, “Hope, like the gleaming Taper’s light, adorns and cheers our way; and still, as darker grows the night, emits a brighter ray.”

Read the full article at The Star Online.

Still, Dawn couldn’t help but daydream about all the things she would do again. Like letting the red electric scooter — her primary method of conveyance these days — gather dust in a closet. Like breaking out the old cane she had so meticulously painted in the early days of her disease, when she could still get around on her own two feet. The source of all her suffering, multiple sclerosis, is a complex and so far incurable ailment with a maddening lack of scientific understanding. Dawn’s wish, by contrast, was simple.

“My goal is to use my cane and walk my kid into kindergarten,” she said.

Dawn’s is a particularly aggressive form of MS. It is characterized by a runaway immune -system response that causes nerve damage and, in the progressive stage, a rapid decline in mobility as the nerves that conduct signals from her brain to the rest of her body degenerate. Her doctors tell her the life she has now — constant pain, agonizing difficulty of movement — is as good as it’s going to get. The treatments currently available in the United States don’t work on someone as far along in the disease process as Dawn.

So the former Sony-BMG sales rep decided to leave the U.S. for Mexico, where she could buy a commodity in short supply back home: hope.

She paid dearly for it, too. By Googling “stem cells,” she found an intermediary who would set her up for a controversial treatment that is currently outlawed in the U.S. The intermediary — a company called Stem Cells for Hope — charged Dawn Gusty $27,000. In return, she hopped a plane to San Diego with her husband John, her two boys and her parents. Upon landing, the Gustys took a Ford Econoline van across the Mexican border into Tijuana — a historically friendly destination for medical tourists.

Read full article: Click here.

Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) who received mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) transplantation in a recent phase 1/2 trial experienced stabilization and, in some cases, improvement; results of the trial are published in the October issue of the Archives of Neurology.

Dimitrios Karussis, M.D., Ph.D., of Hadassah Hebrew University Hospital in Jerusalem, and colleagues administered MSCs to 34 MS and ALS patients to evaluate the safety and feasibility of intrathecal and intravenous administration of autologous MSCs in this patient population.

Read full HealthDay News article.

First, stem cells are immature cells that renew themselves for long periods through cell division.

Also, under certain  conditions, they can be “tricked” chemically to become cells that do special things, like become the beating cells of the heart muscle or the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas.

Doctors around the world are already using stem cells to treat diseases. No one is really sure if the treatments are safe and effective (by scientific standards). But many desperately ill and disabled patients travel many miles and spend many thousands of dollars to obtain these treatments.

This book of prayers is for those patients. But it is also for all patients now and in the future who seek relief from their diseases and disabilities through stem cell-based therapeutics.

Each day, people all over the world are moved to worship and adore God, and to acknowledge that they are dependent upon God.

The Gospels mention many times that Jesus himself often withdrew to quiet, desolate places to pray.

As St. Augustine once wrote, “He wishes our desires to be expressed in prayers so that we may be able to receive what he is ready to give.”

This Treasury of Prayers has four inspiring sections:

● Prayers Before Stem Cell Treatment (Contemplation and Decision);

● Prayers While at the Hospital or Clinic;

● Prayers for Patients with Specific Diseases, Conditions and Disabilities

● Scriptural Readings for the Spiritual Comfort of Stem Cell Patients.

To purchase at Amazon.com, click here.

For more information about “And I Shall Be Healed,” click here.

Dr. Robert Trossel, 56, who had consulting rooms in Wimpole Street, has failed to give patients refunds for the thousands of pounds they spent on treatment at his clinic in Rotterdam, Holland, the General Medical Council (GMC) heard.

Tom Kark, for the GMC, spoke of the patients’ “anger and sense of being let down” after being offered a “mirage” of treatment by Dr Trossel.

He told the GMC fitness to practice panel that Dr Trossel, who trained in Holland, should be struck off.

Read full article. Click here.

“I went with my granddaughter to Washington state, and there was a beach about a half-mile down a nature trail that we would walk every day together,” Posta said. “That is something that I couldn’t have done before Costa Rica. Now, it didn’t phase me.”

Posta went to Costa Rica on Feb. 8 after raising $30,000 in nine months – mostly from strangers – for her stem cell treatment. She enrolled in an intensive four-week program of stem cell and physical therapies.

Posta first made headlines in the Daily Press in January, when she urged people to stop donating money because she had received what she needed.

Now, six months after therapy, she wants to let people know she is doing well.

Source: Montrose (Colo.) Daily Press

Read full article.

Dutch-trained Dr. Robert Trossel teated nine men and women with stem cells not designed for human use.

A GMC hearing has found his fitness to practice was impaired and that he breached “good medical practice”.

It will decide later this month whether to remove him from the medical register or impose a lesser penalty.

The GMC panel said Dr Trossel had exaggerated the benefits of treatment based on “anecdotal and aspirational information”.

Read full article.