Thank you for signing our Declaration of INterDEPENDENCE

Thank you to all those who have signed our appeal to Rick Hansen to ask about a cure for chronic spinal cord injury at www.bit.ly/RickHansen.

It's because of people like you that we are about to surpass the 500 person mark making this one of our best campaigns ever. So now I want to appeal to you to take just one more step to get more people to sign so that our appeal cannot be ignored.

Doing just one of the following will do a lot for the future of CURE.

Copy and paste this very short message and paste it on your Facebook page.

"I signed an appeal to the Rick Hansen Foundation asking them for a commitment to a CURE for chronic spinal cord injury. Now I'm appealing to my facebook friends to sign, too, at www.bit.ly/RickHansen."

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Send an email to your friends. Studies have shown that direct appeals by email work much better than a simple post on Facebook.

"I'm just sending you a quick email to let you know about a campaign to CURE chronic spinal cord injury. I've added my name to the appeal and I hope you will do the same. You can sign it at www.bit.ly/RickHansen."

Declaration of INterDEPENDENCE - Sign it!

Add your name to our appeal at www.bit.ly/RickHansen

To: Mr. Rick Hansen
Re: Getting us up and walking

1. How much are you planning to spend in the next five years to find a cure for chronic spinal cord injury?
2. Which research projects (basic and clinical research) will be funded by Rick Hansen organizations to get people with chronic sci out of wheelchairs?
3. What is the Rick Hansen Foundation/Rick Hansen Institute's ability/willingness to fund promising science to cure chronic spinal cord injury both domestically and internationally?

These are the questions. Now we want an answer.
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The Rick Hansen Foundation (one of the world's largest and most well financed spinal cord injury organizations) is hosting the Interdependence global conference on spinal research starting 15 May in Vancouver, Canada.

This is a very good time for us to shout the cure message loud and clear so that it's not missed.

Many of you have already sent emails to the Rick Hansen Foundation demanding answers and your emails have already had a tremendous impact ( http://stemcellsandatombombs.blogspot.jp/2012/02/you-yours-and-rick-hansen.html ).

Now it's time to ask for more. We have put together a very good set of questions that we need answered and we're going to let the world know that we WANT answered and that's about Rick Hansen's plan to cure chronic spinal cord injury.

You can add your name to the appeal at www.bit.ly/RickHansen

But more than this, we need you to get this in the hands of your friends, family, coworkers, and even enemies to get them to sign. You can download a PDF of our flyer and send it on to your supporters, or just send them the link, www.bit.ly/RickHansen.

We've already done a lot with the Rick Hansen Foundation and now we need a little more push and success or failure lies in our hands.

This is NOT a campaign AGAINST Rick Hansen.
This is AN APPEAL TO Rick Hansen to strengthen cure's side.

This is our long march from INTERdependence to INdependence.

Today is when we declare to all the old paralysis orgs that they must march to the drum of cure regardless of how thankful we are for their past work.

Today is when we stand up.

This is not an appeal by the weak to the strong.
This is not an appeal that we make with bowed heads in hope that someone will help us.
This is an appeal made by those who are standing up and marching together towards cure.

It's up to us, my friends. So let's do it.
www.bit.ly/RickHansen



This campaign has now ended. Thank you for your support.

Roman Reed Paralysis Act passes first step

Thank you to you and all of yours who sent emails to Sacramento, California in response to our call to support the Roman Reed Paralysis Act keep it's funding to bring about a cure for paralysis.


The Public Safety Committee has now passed the funding in a 4-2 vote, but we're not out of the woods yet as there are still four more steps.


Assembly Health Committee, then...
Appropriations Committee (this one is the key), and then...
A full vote in the Assembly, and...
A full vote in the Senate, and finally...
The Governor's desk to be signed.


And now I'll say it again.


The battle for a cure is more than a scientific problem; it's more of a political and economic problem.
This means your participation is key.


Keep up the great work everyone.

From some friends of ours in Italy

I just got an email from a friend who is very involved in the battle to cure paralysis. Great news!


One of the main Italian newspapers carried a story about their Facebook page, and the members' struggles to find a cure for spinal cord injury.


The whole article wasn't about the group, but to score news about a cure and their great picture, puts cure clearly in people's minds.


Just a short blog to celebrate my Italian friends and their work!


Even if you can't read Italian, Google can. So have a look here.

Cure paralysis bill needs your support NOW!

You can help lead the charge to cure paralysis by sending an email (see below) to the three California assembly members. We need your help to pass the funding for this very important piece of legislation by 27 March 2012.


Here is the information from Don Reed's Stem Cell Battles blog.
Last year, the funding was cut off for California’s Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act. This is the law which funded the famous “paralyzed rats that walked again” stem cell research that Christopher Reeve so often talked about.
BUT– here is some great news!
Assembly Bill 1657 Roman Reed Research Funding Act (Wieckowski, D-Fremont) was officially filed today in California!
We need your support as the first committee vote (Public Safety) is next Tuesday, March 27th.  


We need one short email letter of support (see below)



Background:
The Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act was first signed into CA Law in 1999. We provided State funds of 1.5 Million annually to be administered through the UC system to any researcher in CA working on SCI or closely related. Our program is operated at the UC Irvine Christopher Reeve Center and the Roman Reed Core Laboratory is supported within the Center and provides on-site equipment free of charge to new SCI researchers or collaborations.
Supported over 300 Scientists and staff, our program produced over 125 peer reviewed medical breakthroughs, and provided the initial funding to pioneer Dr. Hans Keirstead’s work with re-insulating the damaged spine– work that became the Geron Trials! 


Please send your one-sentence email today!


This campaign is now closed. Thanks to all for your support!!

Can you name them all?

Burning for a cure

I got an idea in my head the other day. With the increased burning in my legs crazy thoughts do come to me and I have to do a little bit of a reality check. The problems though with reality checks is they often stop you from doing what needs to be done.


So, I'm going to write about it and while I'm writing, I'm going to think about it, and at the end, I may decide to go ahead.


My idea goes a little like this.
1. Write to the ministers or secretaries or whatever they call themselves of Health in the G8 countries.


2. I'm going to invite them to a skype conference about curing paralysis. They get together about other stuff, so why not curing paralysis? I feel that this is an important enough thing that they can spare two or three hours for.


3. I'm going to empathise with their problems about limited budgets and then give them an idea that if they work together it will be cheaper.


4. When we work out a good time for the call, I'm going to get them to invite the top researcher from their own countries. If they don't know these people, I'll give them a list. There's no sense having a bunch of health ministers sitting on the phone together because they wouldn't know what to talk about, and since the first one who talks about ramps is getting cut off I have to make sure they got someone to listen to.


5. Then I'm going to call a few friends of mine and I'm certain they will attend. These are people who know stuff and especially why there is currently no cure for paralysis.


6. So at this point there will be scientists working on a CURE for CHRONIC spinal cord injury. They'll know about the science and what they need. There will be ministers of health who control money and all those regulatory bodies that can get in the way. And then there will be me and my friends who can tell everyone why it's currently not working.


7. Then we're going to dole out the homework and get together in another month to see who's done what and we're going to keep doing this until it gets done.


So tell me. Am I crazy? Does this have a chance to work? I think that they're going to ignore me and then I'll have to ask you all to write to them to organise this.


I decided to try. And so I don't bug others that I work with right now, I'll first see how it goes.
I might just be crazy enough to pull it off. And so I don't chicken out, I'm emailing this directly to my blog

BlackBerry from DOCOMO