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Journalism of Courage
A rugby tackle in 1994 broke his neck and left him paralysed neck down. Now, after 14 years, Perry Cross-high-profile motivational speaker and author from Australia-is turning out to be a star campaigner for stem cell treatment and is endorsing the treatment given to him by Dr Geeta Shroff, a controversial, maverick scientist from Delhi.
This, because two months after he came to New Delhi for his treatment, he can—for the first time in 14 years—breathe without ventilator support. And the skepticism shared by the Western media and medical establishment over the use of human embryonic stem cells does not worry him. “I couldn’t breathe on my own, I still can’t bathe on my own. I can’t swim or get wet. The list of things I can’t do are a mile long. Why wouldn’t I try everything?” he told Sky News. “After 14 years of no change at all since my accident, I can now breathe on my own.”
Cross’s amazing recovery has stirred a debate in the international medical community, which has accused Dr Shroff of indulging in “dangerous quackery” and of being an opportunist who takes advantage of terminally ill patients. In her defence, the doctor—who claims to have used human embryonic stem cells to cure a host of incurable and terminal illnesses, including Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis—says the West cannot accept the success of a doctor from a developing country. “It is difficult for the scientific community in the West to accept that a woman doctor from a third-world country has made a breakthrough like this. People driven by vested interests and worried about the financial impact of this technology on the existing scientific community will choose to be sceptical,” said Dr Shroff, director of Nu Tech Mediworld, a 20-bed hospital that started as an infertility clinic.
In his book Still Standing, Cross writes about his desperate search for cure that brought him to India. He came to India in March 2008 for a treatment that is banned in Australia, America and Britain. And the present global debate is a result of Perry’s demand that the treatment, which is regarded as unethical and downright dangerous by many experts, should be allowed in the West.
Cross now hopes that by continuing the treatment, he may even be able to bring back his limp body to life. “Even if I managed to move a finger or one hand, it would be worth it,” he is quoted as telling the Australian media.
Despite the huge amount of money that goes into researching stem cell therapy, most countries have stringent laws restricting it. There is also the ethical question of destroying a potential life to harvest stem cells, which are taken from a five-day-old human embryo. In India, the bioethics committee of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has put in place a set of non-enforceable guidelines but there is no law to govern it.
