Here's something amazing I came across in today's Guardian. If you know people who suffer from spinal injury, paralyses and other diseases that make them dependant on others, please pass this on to them. What follows might help them be independent again. (my sajha community service commitment) ***** 'I don't know how it works' Dr Huang Hongyun cultivates the cells of aborted foetuses and injects them into the brains and spines of his patients. His method is controversial, but his results have led hundreds of westerners to his Beijing surgery. Jonathan Watts was given unprecedented access to the doctor and his patients Wednesday December 1, 2004 The Guardian They come to him in search of miracles. The lame, the sick and the dying; young and old; Christians from the US, Muslims from the Middle East, Buddhists from Japan, agnostics from Europe. Some have been in wheelchairs for years and believe he can help them walk; others are kept alive by respirators, yet hope he can make them breathe. The voiceless have heard he can bring them speech. The terminally ill seek nothing less than more life. In many cases doctors and friends advise them to stay at home, not to waste their money, and warn them of potential risks. For they come in search of one of the most pioneering - and controversial - medical procedures on the planet: the injection of cells from aborted foetuses into the brains and spines of the sick. And the object of their faith is a Chinese surgeon who spent many of his university years labouring as a peasant and is now conducting trial-and-error experiments on live subjects despite his research being rejected by the western medical establishment. Dr Huang Hongyun promises nothing. He claims no miracle cure. He admits he cannot fully explain his results. All he knows, and all he tells his patients, is that his method often works, that the results speak for themselves. "Our results change thousands of years of traditional concepts," he says. The conventional wisdoms that he claims to have turned on their heads are that chronic spinal injuries - injuries that can cause paraplegia or tetraplegia - can never be treated; and that it is almost impossible to stabilise the condition of patients with the wasting disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. "Our results show that is wrong. It is not a miracle, but it is a big change." And in this cyber age - when many people trust the internet more than their own doctors - this is proving to be enough, because the word on the web is that Huang's results are miraculous. Chat sites for paraplegics and ALS sufferers are buzzing with testimonies from former patients who say they are walking, talking and scratching their noses for the first time in years. None of these claims has been proven to western scientific standards, but Huang's willingness to think the unthinkable in order to cure the incurable is inspiring hope; so much hope that patients are putting aside ethical qualms, paying tens of thousands of dollars and flying to Beijing to act as his guinea pigs.