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The Observer updated

What happened to ... Audrey Jones

• Amelia Hill
• The Observer,
• Sunday January 20 2008

Last month The Observer reported on the decision of Audrey Jones, right, a 74-year-old former Lord Mayor of Manchester, to spend a lifetime's savings and travel halfway across the world to undergo an unproven and controversial stem-cell treatment she hoped would save her life. Jones suffers from cerebellar atrophy, a condition for which western doctors say there is no treatment and no cure. Within a couple of years, her neurosurgeon said, the degenerative disease would rob her of the ability to control her movements. Within four years, she would be dead.

The Shenzhen Beike cell engineering research institute in China is the only facility in the world that offers stem-cell therapy. Two weeks ago Jones and her husband, Ray, travelled to Beike's treatment centre in Qingdao. In most of the world, stem-cell therapy is regarded with suspicion. Its theory - that injecting cells taken from the umbilical cord blood of newborn babies will help those suffering cellular degeneration - is seen by most as the stuff of science fiction.

Speaking to The Observer from her room at the Nanshan Hospital last week, Jones said she had already received two of the five injections of cells that will comprise her $23,500 treatment.

'I already feel better,' she said. 'I can climb stairs unaided, while before I had to be hauled up them, and am more confident and steady when I walk around on the flat ground. I am still not nearly as well as I hope to be by the end of the treatment, but I am definitely improving and, fingers crossed, I admit I am both hopeful and optimistic about the future.'

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