Articles labeled: china stem cell treatment

Two airlines refused to fly 5-year-old Hailey Goranflo to Beijing, where she was to receive experimental stem cell treatment for her rare disease.

The airlines, Air China and Air Canada, decided during a layover in Vancouver, British Columbia, that Hailey was “too sick” to fly this weekend. After being treated at a Vancouver hospital for seizures, the girl and her mother were forced to fly home to Shepherdsville, Ky., the report said.

“I’m completely distraught,” [Hailey’s mother Miranda] Goranflo, who disagreed that her daughter was unfit to fly, told the Courier-Journal from Vancouver. “I cannot believe we’ve come this far and we have to come home.”

Hailey and her 3-year-old brother Carter suffer from an incurable disorder called Late Infantile Batten Disease. The disease causes seizures, dementia, and blindness. Most sufferers don’t make it beyond the age of 12. Hailey can no longer walk, talk or eat without a feeding tube, the report said.

Now that there is a very sad Catch 22, that she’s “too sick” to fly to get treatment to possibly make her better…