Becoming The Accidental Advocate

I hadn’t always been physically active.  I wasn’t on any team sports in high school or college and did no significant exercise for eight years during my medical training.  But I made a conscious decision when I finally started practicing medicine to take the time to stay in shape.  I figure that from that point I had spent the equivalent of two years of my life exercising to stay in shape but it didn’t help me on that fateful day, August 16, 2003 when I fell off my bike paralyzing myself from the neck down.

Luckily, suicide was not an option.  I couldn’t pick up a pill much less a gun and certainly couldn’t jump off a roof.  My only choice is to try to get better and make a new life for myself and my family.  It was less than a month after my injury. I was in Kessler Rehab Hospital where I would remain for another six months and my daughter Jessica was actively researching, looking for some miracle to give me my life back.

In the beginning of was all Jessica’s idea.  Film my recovery as we investigated the possibility of stem cell science to ameliorate injuries like mine.  While I was in rehab, I learned how to use a computer, first using voice commands and later adding a control to manipulate the cursor with my head so that I could easily read and write.  Thanks to Jessica and the rest of my I continued to progress so that at three years after my injury I was way beyond the expectations of my doctors.  I needed a transition in my life from just doing my own therapy to finding a new intellectual outlet.  I think Jessica sensed this and decided to begin the stem cell documentary is a full-time job employing me as her correspondent.

We started an amazing journey of discovery with our first stop in Toronto at the annual ISSCR meeting where I got to meet many of the scientists I have been reading about.  I also got to see my daughter in professional mode as filmmaker, writer, director and producer.  Her energy was infectious and I loved spending so much time with her, but I still couldn’t see how our film about the science of stem cell research would be able to reach the target audience of people who usually don’t watch science program.  Realizing this, we decided to show the context of this research in the American political and social scene.  I think we were lucky, to look at the right issue at just the right time.  It was the summer of 2006. Congress and the President were at odds over the stem cell bill, Proposition 71 had passed but was tied up in the courts, ballot initiatives were introduced in some states to outlaw this research yet the science was moving at an incredible speed.

It has meant so much to me to be able to help my daughter on what may end up to be the project of her lifetime as we continue on to present the various aspects of this issue. I have never been involved in politics.

Taking certain politicians to task, exposing their hypocrisy and demanding they parse the truth from their insidious doubletalk on stem cell research has energized me as a doctor and a patient. Making this film has also provided new opportunities so that now I am involved in the ISSCR copyright guidelines for translational research and hope to be valuable to politicians interested in expanding stem cell research.