Free Republic

A guanopathic extended family member with an “ADHD” kid just threatened her husband’s entire side of the family if they don’t actively campaign against repeal of IDEA section 504, which provides accommodations to ADHD and other kids. Biden admin added gender dysphoria to the list of conditions last year. Anybody have an unbiased info source on what’s actually being proposed?

Singer-songwriter John Mellencamp has detailed the startling surgical procedure that saved his life as an infant. Mellencamp, who was born with spina bifida – a condition where the spine and the membranes around the spinal cord are not properly connected, leaving the spinal cord exposed – underwent the pioneering operation not long after he was born in 1951. "I had my head cut off when I was six weeks old," Mellencamp tells Esquire. "There were three other kids who had that same operation that day. The other kids died, and I lived. One girl made it for a while,...

Aubrey Garcia, a 7-year-old girl from Plainville, Kansas, had a crowd of people in tears of joy as she pushed her way through her first-ever track race, a 50-meter dash, on May 14. Her mom, Chelsea Garcia, watched as Aubrey stumbled at one point, but kept going, her determined grit shining through as she pushed forward in her leg braces one step at a time. “I don’t even know how to describe how we felt to watch her accomplish something like this,” she told Runner’s World. “It was just breathtaking to see something happen that you never thought you would...

When Noah Wall was born, the doctors said he probably wouldn’t survive and if he did, he would be severely physically and developmentally disabled. Born with only 2 percent of his brain to a family in Cumbria, England, Noah had no hope — at least according to the doctors.In utero, Noah had developed a rare complication of spina bifida where his skull filled with fluid, crushing his brain down into a “thin sliver of tissue,” according to the UK’s Mirror. His parents — Shelly and Rob — were advised to abort him on five occasions. They refused. After Noah’s birth, an open wound...

A mysterious cluster of severe birth defects in rural Washington state is confounding health experts, who say they can find no cause, even as reports of new cases continue to climb. Federal and state officials won’t say how many women in a three-county area near Yakima, Wash., have had babies with anencephaly, a heart-breaking condition in which they’re born missing parts of the brain or skull. And they admit they haven't interviewed any of the women in question, or told the mothers there's a potentially widespread problem. But as of January 2013, officials with the Washington state health department and...

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, November 4, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The New Zealand Court of Appeal has decided that the parents of a baby who was born in 2007 with spina bifida, despite being given a clean bill of a health at a 20 week ultrasound, may be eligible to receive compensation under the nation’s accident compensation scheme. The mother, whose name has not been released, has claimed that had she been given the correct diagnosis after that scan, she would have aborted her daughter. "We consider that the continued pregnancy of the appellant following a misdiagnosis in the 20 week scan...

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, November 4, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com)  - The New Zealand Court of Appeal has decided that the parents of a baby who was born in 2007 with spina bifida, despite being given a clean bill of a health at a 20 week ultrasound, may be eligible to receive compensation under the nation’s accident compensation scheme. The mother, whose name has not been released, has claimed that had she been given the correct diagnosis after that scan, she would have aborted her daughter. "We consider that the continued pregnancy of the appellant following a misdiagnosis in the 20 week scan...

No person, during the course of any campaign…shall…make a false statement concerning the voting record of a candidate or public official. —An Ohio law The subject of abortion roiled Washington last week, as it has frequently done during the 38 years since the Supreme Court, by nationalizing the issue, made it the cause of a deep fissure in American politics. Last week’s interest in abortion could have been, but was not, because of the simultaneously heartening and (one hopes) unsettling report about stunning success in treating severe forms of spina bifida in utero. If babies can be surgery patients 19...

My purpose for posting this thread is not for sympathy or attention, it is for information. My cousin and his wife just learned that their baby has Spina Bifida. They are five months along, and are obviously in shock.I am very aware of the story of Baby Samuel, who was operated on In Utero and is doing just fine 3-4 years later from what I understand. My question is, how would someone go about finding a Doctor to attempt this procedure? I've learned the Dr's name in Baby Samuel's case. Are there others who do this? Is it realistic to...

LAS VEGAS -- "It is a place that worships momentum and mocks inertia, craves acceleration and condemns lethargy. All angle and pitch, slope and slant, it is a place of dry pools and concrete runways, of mad ramps and half-pipes. No one ever told Aaron Fotheringham it was a place he shouldn't enter, or didn't belong in. After all, he did the same things -- spinning and rising, falling and crashing - every other skateboarder and BMX rider did. Aaron Fotheringham had wheels. His were just a little different than the others. "People call it wheelchair skateboarding," he says with...

NETHERLANDS, January 16, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Dutch paediatric neurosurgeon Rob de Jong, in collaboration with peers from several other countries, has expressed his concern at the practice in the Netherlands of carrying out euthanasia on some babies born with spina bifida in an article in the medical journal Child's Nervous System.According to a report by Radio Netherlands Worldwide, the lives of a small number of babies are terminated each year by doctors who, together with the parents, believe the infant is experiencing unbearable suffering and will continue to suffer in this way in the future.In his article "Deliberate Termination of...

LONDON, England, 13 June, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) London, today refused to let wheelchair-user Alison Davis present a petition on the infanticide of disabled babies. Officials told Ms. Davis, leader of the No Less Human disability rights group, that she could not come in because she would need someone to push her wheelchair, and the RCOG would only let one person into its London headquarters. Alison Davis, who has spina bifida, said: “It would be comical if it weren't also tragic that the RCOG, which has asked for a debate on the killing...

A couple of weeks ago Wake Forest University physicians described the first human recipients of a laboratory-grown organ. In the prestigious medical journal "The Lancet," Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, detailed a series of patients (children and teenagers) who received urinary bladders grown from their own cells. WHAAAAT? Did somebody say "laboratory organs?!" Yes. Perhaps like you, the first reaction of some who heard the news was, “why would anyone need a new bladder?” Well, many infants are born with congenital birth defects a very serous one is spina bifida (incomplete closure of the spine)....

<p>This is just unbeleivable! Please read before viewing picture - it's worth it!</p> <p>A picture began circulating in November. It should be "The Picture of the Year," or perhaps, "Picture of the Decade." It won't be. In fact, unless you obtained a copy of the US paper which published it, you probably would never have seen it.</p>

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Doctors on Friday released Baby Noor, the 3-month-old Iraqi girl brought to the United States for life-saving medical treatment after being discovered by U.S. soldiers in Baghdad. "Her prognosis is excellent as far as her ability to develop normally and cognitively," Dr. Roger Hudgins, the pediatric neurosurgeon at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, told CNN's "Live From."

ATLANTA - The first of a series of operations for Baby Noor, an Iraqi infant who has severe birth defects of the spine, was successful Monday, a hospital spokesman said. Three-month-old Noor al-Zahra was "doing well" and was in recovery Monday morning at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, said hospital spokesman Kevin McClelland. McClelland said in a statement that she "will reunite with her family within the hour." Hospital officials declined to release additional information, saying more details will be released at a 4:30 p.m. news conference. Baby Noor has spina bifida, in which the backbone and spinal cord do not...

ATLANTA — An Iraqi infant brought to the United States for treatment of severe birth defects is "interactive and playful," with good mental function, but will likely wind up using a wheelchair, her doctor said Monday.

<p>An Iraqi infant with a severe birth defect began her journey Friday to the United States, where she will receive medical care at the urging of U.S. soldiers who discovered her during a raid.</p> <p>Noor al-Zahra, who is 3 months old, and family took off in a military transport plane from Baghdad airport, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. They will fly to Kuwait and then board a commercial flight, said social and medical workers who have arranged for her care.</p>

Half-baked Barbara By John McCaslin October 7, 2005 It's not easy being the master of ceremonies for a roast when half of the roasters don't show up. Ask political commentator Mark Shields, who found himself in that uncomfortable position Wednesday evening as the Spina Bifida Association attempted to put TV personality Barbara Walters in the "hot seat" at the Hyatt Regency Washington. "This is more like a bake-off," a visibly embarrassed Mrs. Walters said after the roasting, expressing disappointment that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and fellow roaster Sen. Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana were no-shows. As it...

Mayor Richard Daley on Tuesday viewed the controversy over the fate of Terri Schiavo through the eyes of a father who lost a young son to a disabling condition. And though Daley tried not to take sides in the Schiavo case, it became obvious where he stands as he spoke about Kevin Daley, who died in 1981 when he was 33 months old. "I think it gets down to people with disabilities," the mayor said. "I had a son who was very sick with spina bifida. Some people would have said, `Why should he live?'" Kevin "had a struggle," said...