Brussels, 15/11/2006 (Agence Europe) - The “Stepnow” movement, composed of those suffering from spinal cord injury, has written to the members of the EP Committee on the Environment calling on them to make a clear statement in favour of embryonic stem cell research during the review of the Mikolasik report on advanced therapies.
In their letter, those suffering from spinal cord injury choose to confront MEPs with reality, saying: “Imagine if tomorrow, through no fault of your own and without any warning, you suffer an injury to your spinal cord. It must be understood how much your body and your life will be forever devastated: paralysis will strike you down so that you can no longer move, no longer feel, no longer control the internal organs of your body - bowel, bladder and sexual feelings - they all disappear. You may even lose the ability to breathe on your own as well as lose your hand function and thus be unable to carry out the basic acts of eating, dressing and caressing the ones your love”. The letter continues: “We are sending you this letter on behalf of all our members to urge you to make it a European top priority to remove any legal, administrative and financial hurdles that hinder embryonic stem cell research and we ask you to act accordingly when reviewing the upcoming Mikolasik Report and legislating on advanced therapies. Specifically concerning spinal injury, we also urge you to enable better funding of spinal cord research so that scientists can complete their pre-clinical work and take it to the next stage - human clinical trials - and ultimately to our cure”.
“Stepnow” (Stand Together to End Paralysis Now) is a movement that was born spontaneously on the Internet in April 2006 and which today has around 600 members, most of whom are suffering from spinal cord injury, in 41 countries. After this first approach to MEPs, they plan to conduct operations to heighten the awareness of national parliamentarians and the general public, in the hope of speeding up scientific research that could allow paralysis to be overcome. Further information: http://www.stepnow.org (oj)