Ellee Seymour

A woman crippled in a road accident is on her feet again thanks to revolutionary embryonic stem cell treatment in New Delhi.

Sonya Smith was run over by her own car in Brisbane 17 months ago as she tried to stop it rolling down a hill with her three young daughters inside.

After two months of injections and physiotherapy, she has regained control of her bladder and bowel, sensation in her thighs and feet, and leg muscle growth. She can stand and walk with the aid of callipers.

Now back home, she has called on the Federal Government to give other Australians the same opportunity.

One of those is adventure loving Michael D’Amelio , from Melbourne, (pictured with his girlfriend) who was crippled after a sky-diving accident in Switzerland went  horribly wrong. He plans to go to China for similar treatment in August and is trying to raise $30,000 for the treatment.

Michael hopes that one day he will play football and basketball, compete in triathlons and go hiking again. Recently, he typed the words “walk” and “paraplegic” into Google. Of the tens of thousands of websites that came up, he decided the option that showed the most promise was stem cell therapy in China.

This is such a terrific picture of a great looking, hunky man with his girlfriend Shennae in hysterics; he looks so positive, optimistic and relaxed. If you are in that situation, you will try anything to get up on your feet again. Let’s hope the treatment is successful. These examples are two good reasons why we need to support embryonic stem cell research.

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Gordon Brown has no choice but to grant tax relief on the Madeleine McCann search fund on humanitarian grounds. How could any government feel comfortable in boosting its coffers this way, profiteering from the tragedy of these horrific and exceptional circumstances?

Every penny is desperately needed to finance an international search and pay for private investigators to track down the four-year-old girl snatched from her bed.

As things stand, the fund will have to pay 28p tax for every £1 it receives in donations as it is exempt from gift aid, and it is also liable for VAT. And tax will have to be paid on all interest accrued by the fund. The McCann’s were hoping for charitable status, but their request was turned down by the Charity Commission because the money raised was not for the “wider public good”. How cold and inhumane does that sound, knowing these dreadful facts?

I wonder how comfortable Gordon Brown feels about this after promising the family he would help in any way he could. Now is the time to demonstrate that. The fund stands at almost £116,000.

And I hope other deserving cases will be shown the same compassion, like the children from Chernobyl whose charity is forced to pay airport tax on their respite breaks to the UK. After I highlighted the story on my blog, a very generous blogger Tom Paine paid the money on their behalf.

Surely charity begins at home, let’s see some of it please, Gordon ….

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Nicole Morin totally vanished 22 years ago aged eight while walking to an elevator in her Toronto apartment block to meet a friend who was waiting for her in the downstairs lobby.  She never arrived.

Her unsolved disappearance marked a turning point for similar police investigations as it took a week before homicide were alerted. How much crucial forensic and witness evidence was lost in that time?

On July 30th, 1985, Nicole had left her mother’s penthouse apartment at 10:30am and went to the lobby of the 20 storey apartment building to pick up the mail; they lived on the top floor. She then returned to the apartment and got ready to go swimming with a playmate.

Before leaving the apartment, Nicole had spoken to a friend through the building’s intercom and promised to be right down. The playmate waited about 15 minutes before buzzing the apartment again to find out why Nicole hadn’t arrived. The two girls had arranged to meet in the lobby and go to a supervised swimming pool at the rear of the building.

About 11:00am had Nicole said goodbye to her mother and left the apartment. No-one has seen her since she closed the apartment door and walked into the hallway.

There are lots of interesting comments on this websleuth forum about how the abductor must have been someone in the apartment block who slipped through the police net. One of the comments mentions a website which says Nicole was recognised on a Dutch paedophile ring’s CD-Rom.

Nicole’s case was one of a series of mysterious disappearances of young girls around that time. Christine Jessop, nine, went missing from her home the October before Nicole vanished. Sharin Morningstar Keenan, also nine, was abducted in January 1983, and Alison Parrot disappeared July 1986 aged 11. All turned up dead, their bodies found, except Nicole’s. Other girls have also gone missing. The Morins spent many years and much money on private investigators.

Nicole’s father Art gave a very poignant newspaper interview to the Toronto Sun in 2005 to mark the 20th anniversary of her disappearance, distraught that there was still no explanation. He keeps a box of mementoes, including her school work and his Father’s Day cards. You can read the full interview in the comments. The picture on the right uses age progression techniques to show how Nicole would look today.

In memory of those who are still missing.

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