Please consider the following when voting this year: Stem cell research is the only hope many people with many different diseases have of ever living a normal life. This issues has become especially near and dear to me as my own disease has decided to progress rapidly over the last few weeks. In fact, some kind of stem cell treatment may be my only hope of living more than 5-10 more years unless we receive some kind of miracle or my body begins responding to treatment again.

Do not take my word for how important stem cell research could be to lupus patients:

“Many patients with severe forms of lupus have limited treatment options that may offer only temporary relief of symptoms and no disease regression. For these patients, stem cell transplantation therapy may offer hope for a normal functioning immune system,” said Stephen I. Katz, M.D., Ph.D., director of NIH’s National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS).

or better yet do a google search of the words stem cell research only hope and see how many people depend on this research finding something anything to offer them hope for the future.

I am not advocating abortion. I am advocating using what resources we have available that would otherwise be destroyed regardless as a result of fertility treatments. I also advocate allowing research using adult dna injected into an egg that has been emptied of all other genetic content to grow stem cells that are an exact genetic match to the patient to avoid rejection issues.

I am advocating life. I am asking that if faced with deciding issues about stem cell research this election year that before you shoot it down as immoral because of fears they will kill unborn babies consider the fact that the research I spoke of using adult cells and an empty egg to grow genetically compatable stem cells appears to be the best course for 99% of the problems that stem cell research is intended to address. In fact only those with a serious genetic defect already present really face the need to use stem cells from another source after all the research is done. And even in those cases it may be possible for the faulty gene to be repairered or replaced without using stem cells not originating from that person's own dna.

Stem cells could cure MS, MD, Lupus, Parkinsons, Lukemia, and a host of other diseases. Stem cell research could develop a way to grow transplantable organs so that we could save millions of lives without having someone else die to save another. Imagine how it must feel to know that for you to live someone else has to die and donate their organs. How guilty transplant patients must feel to be alive. Yes, some transplants can be done with the donar still alive in the end but still that donar is taking huge risks.

Please vote to allow stem cell research because not only will it help me but it will help millions of others. I really want to live a normal life. I would love to throw away all the medications I take on a daily basis. I would love to not be taking a medication that is known to cause some kinds of cancers when taken long term because the alternative is worse than the risks. I would love to be able to go outside and enjoy sunshine again instead of living in fear I will get exposed to the sun and make my condition worse. I miss sunlight and doing simple things like enjoying a spring day without fear.

I miss living without the constant restrictions and without doom hanging over my head if I do things everyone else is able to do without anything horrible happening to them. Things like going for a walk outside. Things like eating a freaking hamburger- I can't even eat a hamburger any more without serious painful after effects all because my immune system attacks my digestive tract.

I want to watch my children grow up and have children of their own. I want to play with my son and not feel weak after a few short minutes. I want to be normal. I want to be healthy.

All of that is a pipe dream unless someone finds a treatment that works. Well, in research studies stem cell transplants have a 50/50 sucess rate of lupus NOT returning even after 5 years. When lupus does return it is much less severe so even that 50/50 rate is better than what I have now. Given more research and time I am positive they can turn 50/50 chances of a cure into much better odds. Facing what I face now 50/50 odds would be more than enough to get me to participate in research. I have avoided joining any study that involved actual treatments up until now, I have given dna samples and blood samples and medical records and even agreed to be followed for a medication I already needed but I have never even considered trying a treatment as part of a research study. I have always taken treatments we had research enough on to know they would work. Were I offered a chance to participate in any kind of stem cell research today or tomorrow, even if it weren't the one they have had sucess with already, I would jump at the chance. I would do it in a heartbeat. Even if it meant risking my life to do so because without some kind of improvement my life will be an even greater hell on earth in the coming years. I viewed my brain and mind as some kind of compensation for the worthless state of my physical body. Now my mind and brain are under attack. I face the chance of losing me, something I view as worse than dying.