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THE EYES OF THE BLIND SHALL SEE ‚ PART IIa
‚“RYLEA IS NOT ALONE‚
...the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness.
Isaiah 29:18
HOPING FOR SIGHT
Treatment in China may enable 6-year-old Rylee Lovett to see
By DOUGLAS JORDAN - Special to The Record
Posted: Monday, December 3, 2007
Rylee Lovett, 6, a kindergartner at FSDB sits with her family in their Davis Shores home. By DARON DEAN, daron.dean@staugustine.com
A Davis Shores family is hoping an innovative new treatment not available in the U.S. will give their daughter sight. The girl and her mother plan to travel all the way to China in January for stem cell treatment that has offered hope to patients previously considered incurable‚¦the 6-year-old also suffers from a rare congenital condition known as Optic Nerve Hypoplasia (ONH)‚¦ONH is one of the three most common causes of visual impairment in children and results from underdevelopment of the optic nerve during pregnancy. Because nerves cannot repair themselves, the condition is largely considered incurable.
Searching the Internet for information on ONH, she (Rylee's mother) came across the story of a Missouri child, Rylea Barlett, who also had the condition and had successfully obtained sight from the treatment‚¦does not use embryonic stem cells, which are the subject of most of the controversy. Instead, doctors use stem cells taken from the blood of umbilical cords from live births, which had historically been discarded after birth as medical waste.
(Cameron's story ‚ DM)
Carol Petersen, a Port Charlotte woman whose grandson, Cameron, was successfully treated by Beike at China's Hangzhou Hospital in September, has nothing but good things to say about the treatment. "It's incredible, simply incredible," Petersen said by telephone. "Cameron could not see at all before the treatment, and now he can. After the second treatment, he began to recognize things we held up about two feet from his face and to crawl toward toys we put on the floor. These are things he'd never done before."‚¦"I've done a lot of research on this, and have been following them pretty closely," Lovett said. "Four children have now received the treatment, and they've all been successful."
(A doctor's opinion ‚ DM)
Dr. David Klein is a Port Charlotte ophthalmologist who has also studied the procedure. He deals with many children with ONH and has talked with some of the families who have gone to Beike for treatment. He believes it is a legitimate procedure that should be taken seriously as an option. He has recommended the treatment to parents of children with ONH‚¦Klein said there is a misconception that, because the procedure isn't legal here, it must be suspect. And, he said, people might think Chinese medicine is inferior to that in the U.S.
Not so, Klein said.
"The level of ophthalmology in China is surprisingly high," Klein said. "In fact, the level of medicine as a whole in China is high."
(Rylee views the situation more simply ‚ DM)
"I want to go to China," she said, smiling. "I want to see."
Rylee's Web site can be found at http://www.blessherwithsight.com/