Norm3
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December 30, 2007
Dad was a superman to the end
In their first British interview, Christopher Reeves children talk in moving detail about how the family clung together in his fight against paralysis
For the last nine years of his life, Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman, became a different kind of superhero. Paralysed from the neck down after a riding accident in 1995, he turned his wheelchair into a rolling campaign to promote scientific research into possible cures for spinal cord injuries.
A few months before his death in 2004, he sat down in front of a video camera and declared: I dont want to be melodramatic, but Im 51 and the clock is ticking ... I dont want to be a senior citizen before Im cured. The moving scene appears in Christopher Reeve: Hope in Motion, a pair of documentaries made by Reeves older son, Matthew, a 28-year-old film director.
By some kind of cosmic coincidence that would surely have enchanted his father, I met Matthew Reeve and his sister Alexandra in New York around the same time that scientists in Japan and Wisconsin were preparing to unveil what may prove the most significant achievement in stem cell research to date.
Two teams of scientists reported independently that they had succeeded in reprogramming ordinary skin cells to make them behave like embryonic stem cells, the magical building blocks of human development that can be transformed into brain, bone, heart or nerve tissue. Although the process is not yet perfect, it has shown initial success in treating sickle-cell anaemia in mice and has the potential to transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of people suffering from paralysis.
more:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/lif...cle3107619.ece
http://www.christopherreeve.org/
Dad was a superman to the end
In their first British interview, Christopher Reeves children talk in moving detail about how the family clung together in his fight against paralysis
For the last nine years of his life, Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman, became a different kind of superhero. Paralysed from the neck down after a riding accident in 1995, he turned his wheelchair into a rolling campaign to promote scientific research into possible cures for spinal cord injuries.
A few months before his death in 2004, he sat down in front of a video camera and declared: I dont want to be melodramatic, but Im 51 and the clock is ticking ... I dont want to be a senior citizen before Im cured. The moving scene appears in Christopher Reeve: Hope in Motion, a pair of documentaries made by Reeves older son, Matthew, a 28-year-old film director.
By some kind of cosmic coincidence that would surely have enchanted his father, I met Matthew Reeve and his sister Alexandra in New York around the same time that scientists in Japan and Wisconsin were preparing to unveil what may prove the most significant achievement in stem cell research to date.
Two teams of scientists reported independently that they had succeeded in reprogramming ordinary skin cells to make them behave like embryonic stem cells, the magical building blocks of human development that can be transformed into brain, bone, heart or nerve tissue. Although the process is not yet perfect, it has shown initial success in treating sickle-cell anaemia in mice and has the potential to transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of people suffering from paralysis.
more:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/lif...cle3107619.ece
http://www.christopherreeve.org/
