DALLAS—
Smiling from ear to ear, 26-year old Sean Carter is hopeful embryonic stem cell research will help him. A brain injury prevents him from walking and talking but he understands everything.He communicates by using this computer and says, My mom is at my side all of the time now I have lost all of my independence I need help with the most basic of tasks I can manage to get my own toothbrush and squeeze the toothpaste onto it."
Sean was a model in New York for a few months. It was a way to pay for college. His dream was to be a real estate attorney. But four years ago, he and two friends were heading home after drinking at a bar when they were involved in a crash.
Tomorrow President Obama is expected to reverse stem cell limits imposed by President Bush on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Hi mother, Jenny Carter says "The possibility that his brain that these stem cells could turn into brain cells and take over for the part of his brain that isn't functioning that's a phenomenal promise and hope."
Kyleen Wright President of Texans for Life Coaliton says, "It is a big slippery slope to begin creating human life for the purpose of destroying or researching it each human being has rights and should not be created even for the benefit of someone else." She adds, stem cells from adult tissue and umbilical cord blood are available without harming embryos and are already in clinical use, "The embryonic stem cell research is in our opinion a pipe dream that and scientists have even said something that we are 30 - 40 or more years away on anything to work with."
Carter says, "When you know that you have a person with all of this promise and you know he's got the will to do it and you believe in it with all your heart and can't get help i mean there's nothing to describe how horrible you feel as a mother."
Sean says, "I would hope it could help me walk and talk because inability to do those two things influence would improve everything about my life."
