Since 2014 Christine and I have been part of a facebook group called Run MND. The name is, I hope, self explanatory. Its members run, walk, shuffle around various organised challenges to raise funds for MND charities and awareness of MND/ALS. This week we lost Tony Cope and Jody de Vos, both known to the Run MND group who have been battling MND.
There is currently no effective treatment and certainly no cure for MND, but there is always hope that with sufficient funding medical science will beat MND/ALS. So it was with great interest that we read an article in the Washington Post this week about an experimental stem cell treatment that reversed the symptoms of MND/ALS in an American man named Ted Harada. Tragically Ted died four years after his treatment from a brain tumour, not MND. Ted was the only person to have been successfully treated, but no one knows how long his remission from MND/ALS would have lasted. Obviously, there is much research to be done to convert one incredible result into an effective treatment but this research gives a glimmer of hope for those currently without hope. It's why we must continue to raise funds, it's why we must keep running. As the Run MND motto goes "There's no finish line until there's a cure"
Copy and paste this link to the Washington Post article into your browser:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-man-who-beat-lou-gehrigs-disease/2017/01/03/5cf898e4-d1b4-11e6-945a-76f69a399dd5_story.html?postshare=7911483469035555&tid=ss_fb&utm_term=.76c73076808f
