Revolutionary Therapies

For author Don C Reed, father of a paralyzed son, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is the greatest medical advance since penicillin.

REVOLUTIONARY THERAPIES is Reed's third book about the 3 billion stem cell program.

Voted into law in November 2004, CIRM is now running out of money.

Should its funding be renewed? Thereby hangs a tale, or rather several dozen of them, for each of the book's 71 short chapters is framed by a yarn or vignette.

The factual background is accurate, vetted by the scientists, but Reed's goal is clearly both entertainment and education.

A favorite example is a little girl named Evie, imprisoned in a plastic bubble: her body's immune system did not work, and she would die outside. She joined a CIRM clinical trial ... Imagine how Evie's parents felt — when she got well.

Some stories are comical, like "How Stem Cell Research Saved My Car"; others surprising, like the comparison between politics and the giant crocodile Gustave; others are tragic or inspiring: but all point to this:

More than 100 million Americans suffer chronic disease, causing mountains of medical debt — and the only way to reduce that expense (3 trillion last year) — is cure.

Related Link(s)

• The Cost of Changing Lives and the Face of Medicine

Sample Chapter(s)
Introduction: The Odds Against the California Stem Cell Program

• Introduction: The Odds Against the California Stem Cell Program
• The Silent Hurricane
• Uncle Ben's Kidneys
• Blindness for the Old
• So, You Want to be a Stem Cell Scientist?
• The One-Leg Placebo
• Can We Lower the Prices of Medicine and Therapies?
• "Tesi": Or, How to Engineer an Intestine
• Fighting Rett Syndrome
• The Disease Which Caused a Revolution?
• Leader of the Board
• Hitting Yourself in the Chest
• The Cost of Doing Nothing
• The ATM Disease
• Preventing Medical Bankruptcy?
• New Babies, New Scientists
• Secrets for Free
• Speaking Before Those Who Oppose
• The First 500 Pounds — And Donald Kohn
• Why Fetal Cell Research Must be Allowed
• "Told Your Child is Going to Die..."
• Flat Feet and Neuropathy
• Battling Schizophrenia
• Of Werewolves, Plague, and the Zika Virus
• Getting All the Cancer
• Two Bulldogs
• Other People's Pain: Fighting Bowel Disease
• Building Bone Density
• Money, Hope, and Huntington's
• A Better Rat?
• "Tuesdays with Morrie": Battling ALS
• Punching at Parkinson's
• Arthritis Champions
• Marching for Science?
• Blood, Blood, Blood!
• Someone Who Gets Things Done
• The Voice of CIRM
• Adventures on Bridges: Humboldt State University
• Inside Gloria's Heart
• Fighting Beside Other Countries
• Jobs and New Money
• Scars: By Moray Eels and Other Causes
• Battling Duchenne
• In Which Stem Cell Research Saves My Car
• Should Scientists Run for Office?
• The Strangest Thing Inside My Head
• Of Crocodiles, and Politics
• Raja's Story
• To More Swiftly Heal a Broken Bone?
• Surprises, Awkward and Otherwise
• The Man with the Plan to Assassinate Cancer?
• Lung Cancer, and the Bent Cigarette
• Introducing Madame President
• Fighting Bladder Cancer
• Sickle Cell — And Insults?
• Two Diseases, One Therapy?
• Gloria at Home
• Of CIRM, and Buying My House
• Cooperation with the Capitol
• The Christmas Truce
• Alexander's Challenge
• The Smallest Miracle
• Interview with the Founder: Bob Klein
• The Big Bang Theory, CIRM, and a Dolphin Named Spock
• For My Son
• The ISSCR Adventure
• The Most Terrible Disease
• Body as Battlefield: Clinical Studies Funded by CIRM
• More Victims Than Five Kinds of Cancer?
• Vertigo, Chickens, and Maybe Great News
• A World without CIRM?
• What We Must Do
• Afterword
• Name Index
• Subject Index