Adult Stem Cells saved my life

He calls himself the miracle man but good science and a lot of good luck may have more to do with his recovery from Leukemia than a true miracle.
Diagnosed with chronic meylogenous leukemia back in 1995, Stephen Sprague says he is
“A man touched by God and miracles…more than one.”

Doctors tried everything to cure him, including months of chemotherapy. He was on a waiting list for a bone marrow transplant when his disease took a turn for the worse. An only child with no siblings, there were no donors available and none in the registries matched his type.

“I was diagnosed with a chronic kind of leukemia and they told me you have 3-5 yrs before you have to start to worry, so I said I can deal with that. (But) a year and a half after diagnosis I went from first stage to blast crisis stage - the end stage of this process.”

But as Stephen’s luck would have it, an unknown woman in New York decided to donate her baby’s umbilical cord after birth.

“She was at a hospital that had a cord blood collection program and I am sure they asked her would she be willing to donate and obviously she said yes. She to this day has no idea what she’s done. Part of the donation process is that the mother and child remain anonymous.”

Because of the anonymous donation process, that woman will never know that thanks to her, Stephen Sprague was completely cured of Leukemia and was alive fourteen years later to tell his story to participants at a November 2011 conference in the Vatican on the therapeutic potential of adult stem cells.

In this program by Tracey McClure, you can listen to Stephen’s story and to Dr. Andrew Pecora who was determined to save his life. Dr. Pecora and his team of researchers at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey were conducting the first clinical trials using umbilical cord blood as an alternative source of stem cells to bone marrow and embryos when Stephen Sprague arrived, asking them for help ...