"Let’s bring hope to Michigan patients"

by JulieLyn Gibbons
Lansing, Mich.

My life took a gut-wrenching turn when I was 14 and diagnosed with Crohn's Disease, a little-understood illness that destroys the gastrointestinal system. There's no cure for it. The only treatment available to me is a regimen of regular surgeries and the steady removal of pieces of me.

Almost 15 years after my diagnosis, I'm missing entire portions of my body, including my colon and rectum. To stay alive and function, I spend $300 every month in ostomy supplies, among a long laundry list of needs that I'll live with for the rest of my life.

If I were to have children -- something I want -- I may pass this terrible disease down to them, and that's a choice that breaks my heart.

More than a million people across the nation have Crohn's. By engaging in all forms of stem cell research -- adult and embryonic -- researchers can better understand how to treat and hopefully cure patients suffering from diseases and injuries.

For many of us, the best hope lies in stem cell research. But we need to explore all avenues of stem cell research -- from adult to embryonic stem cells and researchers need to have all the tools they need in the race for cures and treatments.

For me and for countless patients, stem cell research in all its forms – adult and embryonic – offers a ray of hope. We should open all the doors that can lead to cures and give our researchers access to all the weapons they need to win the war against diseases and injuries.

Embryonic stem cell research is the difference between hope and despair, between living a life shackled to the limitations of my illness and living a life – one day – that comes far closer to normal than it is today.

That’s my story. And that’s why I and so many other patients support embryonic stem cell research.