Stem cell trial halted, but 23-year-old recipient still has hope
http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news...
Stem cell clinical trials were still under way last month when Katie Sharify's car careened off Highway 5, ejecting her through the back window and paralyzing her from the waist down.
Stanford and Valley Medical Center doctors considered Sharify an ideal candidate to test whether an injection of embryonic cells was safe and could help her regain any sensation.
But just two days before she was scheduled to receive the treatment, the Menlo Park company leading the trials canceled the program. Sharify's doctors injected her anyway, giving her a chance, no matter how small, that two million stem cells creeping up her damaged spine could make a difference.On Tuesday, as Sharify, 23, sat in her wheelchair at Santa Clara County's Valley Medical Center, she discussed her mixed feelings about being the fifth -- and for now, the last -- patient in the United States to receive the experimental treatment for paralysis victims.
Words come easily to Sharify; she had been a communications major at USC and a 2006 graduate of Amador Valley High School in Pleasanton, where she had been a member of a future business leaders club.
"I want someone somewhere to see me," Sharify said. "Maybe there's a head of a big company who sees this and says, 'we should help this girl.' "
Good luck in this rigged casino,
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