Stem cells offer only hope for ALS

To the editor:

In reply to Dr. Michael Wulfers' letter on using aborted stem cells to help David Landewee and Jim Trickey:

I am a Christian. I do not believe in abortions to end an unwanted pregnancy.

But these embryos are being aborted as a result of an order by the Chinese government, not by the choice of the mothers. Nor are they aborted for the sole purpose of implanting them into people with terrible afflictions.

Jim Trickey's family and I have something in common. I lost my husband to ALS four years ago. He was the fifth member of his immediate family to die from ALS.

My four children and five nieces stand a 50 percent chance of taking this terrible disease.

The ALS Association has been doing a lot of research on this disease, but so far it has no found anything to help cure or slow it down. The stem-cell procedure is the only hope we have.

Is it any more wrong to use stem cells to possibly help someone with a devastating and fatal disease than to throw the cells in the trash?

Until you have walked in the shoes of my family with ALS, don't be so judgmental of those who are brave enough to try these experiments.

You don't know what you would do in a situation until you are faced with it.

I think you will do almost anything to help yourself and future generations if it is an inherited disease.

JOYCE MOORE, Chaffee, Mo.