Emmanuel Bishop, Down syndrome advocate
Given my experience at Christ Hospital, I have a particular soft spot for people with Down syndrome.
I remember meeting Emmanuel Bishop at a pro-life conference 10 years ago when he was five years old. I have enjoyed receiving periodic emails about Emmanuel’s progress from his father, Victor, ever since.
Well, I received one yesterday that blew me away. It had to do with a keynote address Emmanuel, now 15, gave at the Trisomy 21: Down Syndrome in the 21st Century Conference in Houston, Texas, in February.
Here were the stated goals and objective’s of Emmanuel’s speech:
1. Highlight the abilities, talents, skills and gifts in Down syndrome.
2. Counteract the low expectations in Down syndrome.
3. Show that the joy of living does not preclude individuals with Down syndrome.
4. Mitigate the prevalence that everything told or written about Down syndrome comes primarily from someone without Down syndrome.
Toward that end, here is Emmanuel’s incredible bio. He is obviously more on the ball than me:
Emmanuel’s first presentation was at age 3 sight-reading flashcards in French at Lewis & Clark Community College in Godfrey, IL (March, 1999). At 6, he read a welcoming statement in three languages at the 2003 St. Louis NDSS Annual Conference Plenary Session in front of 600 people. At 12 he played a violin recital at the 10th World Down Syndrome Congress (August, 2009) in Ireland in front of 900 people and gave his PowerPoint presentation at a breakout session. This year he played the violin with the Antalya State Symphony Orchestra in Turkey for World Down Syndrome Day.
He has spoken at Down syndrome conferences (Eastern Pennsylvania Down Syndrome Center, Lincoln Land Down Syndrome Society, Down Syndrome Association of Greater Richmond, Trisomy 21: Down Syndrome in the 21st Century) and retreats (Frankie’s Fund Mother’s Weekend Conference [September, 2007]).
Emmanuel is homeschooled, is being raised bilingual English/Spanish and tutored in French and Latin. He sight-read at age 2; has studied Suzuki violin since age 6; learned to ride a bicycle at 8; was a State Special Olympics medalist in golf and aquatics: 200 and 400 freestyle at 10; and set six Junior Down Syndrome Swimming World records and became an altar server at 13 and confirmed at 14.
Emmanuel’s self-advocate presentation is targeted to parents and professionals to raise awareness of the abilities in persons with Down syndrome. The PowerPoint presentation entitled “Before and After” shows the life of a 15-year-old boy with Down syndrome: his interests and accomplishments in sports, music, academics and foreign languages. Golf, biking, violin, swimming, etc. video clips will be shown. Q&A follows the presentation.
And here are excerpts from Emmanuel’s presentation:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itEiVSM1Anw[/youtube]
Emmanuel, I’m so proud of you. You’re such a wonderful example. And your parents are awesome, too!
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
This reminds me of the late Christopher Nolan, an Irish author whom some compared to literary giants like Joyce and Yeats. Nolan had cerebral palsy because of a traumatic birth (not an abortion like Gianna Jessen). However, Nolan was extremely concerned that handicapped fetuses were being aborted. When asked to make a speech, he did so — through someone reading his comments since he never spoke due to his disability — on the subject of the abortion of disabled fetuses. He asked, “Why does society fear the crippled child?”
What an amazing young man! Let him remind us why we fight for the rights of babies (and all people) with Down Syndrome. Jerome Lejeune, the brilliant pro-life French geneticist who discovered the cause of Down Syndrome, was devastated to learn his discovery was leading to the genocide of the very population he was trying to help. For every Emmanuel, there are over 90 people murdered because they have Down Syndrome.
Wow! I tip my hat to this wonderful young man! I love to read stories like this. God will use those the world calls “simple” to confound those the world calls “wise”. AMEN.
LOVE!!
I too have a soft spot for those with Down Syndrome. I met a little boy with DS named Adam when I was in high school. Precious!
God bless Emmanuel.
Along similar lines–witnessing to the value and dignity of all human persons no matter if they have a disability–here is a great blog written by the father of a boy (just turned one years old) with Down’s syndrome. He chronicles the daily events and progress of his son. He’s a great example of a father who fully accepts and loves and supports his son all the way.
http://noahsdad.com/
Come tell us how it would have been a public service to have this child killed in utero, joan. I know you want to.
Yes Xalisae, I am sure joan can provide us with a discussion on how much better it would be for chlldren like Emmanuel to “never been born at all”, you know those “human weeds” and mental defectives that her idol Margaret Sanger, PP’s founder, wrote about in her eugenic booklets.
xalisae says:
July 20, 2012 at 6:33 am
Come tell us how it would have been a public service to have this child killed in utero, joan. I know you want to.
(Denise) Xalisae, how do we bring to term the unborn when the female pregnant with them dies? For example, I gave an example of a young lady who was pregnant way back in the days when having a baby out of wedlock was a cause of disgrace. She had a very conservative family. She sought an illegal abortion. The doctor turned her down and lectured her on the health risks of seeking an illegal abortion elsewhere. A few days later he read of her having shot herself and being found dead.
Heather pointed out that there’s no absolute way of knowing her suicide was due to the pregnancy. It may have been the result of a harsh family and an exploitative boyfriend. However, we tend to associate suicide with an immediate prior trauma. For example, people tend to think Tyler Clementi killed himself because his roommate surreptitiously broadcast him having gay sex on the Internet.
At any rate, the aforementioned young lady died. The law supposedly protected the unborn — yet the unborn died when she did! How could it have been saved with her dead?
I probably should add something. I’ve been accused of being too soft on women. It might surprise some people to know that most of my friends are men. All other things being equal, I generally prefer male company to female company and always have.
I also devoted much of my life to avoiding abortion since it horrifies me.
He is utterly cute!
Thanks for posting, wonderful!!
Awesome!!!! :)
This young man is exceptionally gifted, and thanks to research by a father of a daughter with trisomy 21, Dr Alberto Costa of U of Colorado, many more children with Down syndrome may be able to achieve such lofty goals. His clinical studies with memantine, an Alzheimer’s Drug, have just had positive results in young people with Down syndrome.The young people have had improvements in memory, some as dramatic as ten times their former capacity. Soon we will have a remedy for some of the cognitive delays which accompany trisomy 21.
SM, Dr Costa is following in the tradition of the late Dr Jerome Lejeune, who in his day, was the ONLY researcher who believed it was possible to ‘cure’ or even treat Down syndrome. All others thought it too complex and surrendered to the so called cure (pre-natal diagnosis and abortion of babies with extra chromosomes). This is unacceptable for no other disease is death considered a cure.
Dr Lejeuene said, “Again and again, we see this absolute misconceptio of trying to defeat a disease
by eliminating the patient! It’s ridiculous to stand beside a patient and solemnly day, ‘Who is the upstart who refused to be cured? How dare he resist our art? Let’s get rid of him!’ Medicine becomes mad science when it attacks the patient instead of the disease. We must always be on the patient’s side. Always.”
“for no other disease is death considered a cure.”
I wish what you were saying was true. Sadly, they now apply this “cure” to anything that can be diagnosed prenatally.
JDC, you are right, but Down syndrome led the way, it has been pre-natally diagnosable since the sixties and it remains the best known diagnosis.
Soon parents of children with autism will find their research funding drying up as genetic markers for autism are uncovered. Is this a proper use of science, instead of seeking a cures?
Dr. Lejeuene seems to echo Christopher Nolan’s “Why does society fear the crippled child?”
Abortion has an ironic relationship to disability. It cuts down on the disabled but it can also lead to more disability. Those who have survived late-term abortions are often severely handicapped as a consequence.
In at least 1 case, there was a kind of double irony. A woman found out her fetus had Down Syndrome and asked for an abortion. Tim, the “Oldenburg Baby,” was born alive. Left for hours unattended, his handicap was much worse than it would have been had he been carried to term. However, he later perked up after — of all things — dolphin therapy!
His mother didn’t want custody. She had a nervous breakdown and committed suicide 6 years after his birth. She left no note so it can’t be known for sure that her suicide was connected to what happened to Tim but I think it is likely she killed herself because she was tormented by the memory of what she had done to him.
A few decades ago (1981), I traveled to Germany to receive a new therapy called: Cell Therapy in English/// Zelltherapie in German. The approach has been abandoned since, because its main proponent (Prof. med. Franz Schmid) died.
Each cell is composed of thousands of chemicals. This concept (rather than seeking out a single drug) works, if you replace a cell that does not work with another that does, then you have a cure. There were many hurdles to make this strategy work …. not the least was to find cells from non-humans to work as ‘human’ cells. [Human cells will reject non-host cells as ‘foreign’ material. The ‘trick’ lies in a bit of chemistry.
All proteins are made of 48 groupings of three amino acids (ADA~FTF~XYX~etc). It was found that human cells and sheep cells have the identical amino acid profile, except two. Further it was noted that each organ has a unique sequence of amino acids, so injected cells do not need to be on-the-site-of-injury, They will quickly get to precisely where they they are needed. [This knowledge is not applied, even to present-day ‘stem cell approaches’.]
There are a few other ‘tricks’: they use placental cells, to fool the body into believing a new regeneration period is happening. And the researchers also found that sheep are much more resistant to cancer, than are humans. They developed ‘Resisto-cell’.
I really love this approach because all kinds of brain disorders also have an expression in ‘the body’. This therapy allows treatment of both-at-once. Two of Prof. Schmid’s favorites were kids with Downe’s or cerebral palsy(CP).
http://picasaweb.google.com/115884810351466240373/OurLittleExtrasMomsCelebrateDownSyndrome?feat=embedwebsite#
TheLastDemocrat says:
July 20, 2012 at 4:16 pm
http://picasaweb.google.com/115884810351466240373/OurLittleExtrasMomsCelebrateDownSyndrome?feat=embedwebsite#
(Denise) The pics are BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!! Especially Traci with little Nicholas: he has the sweetest face I’ve ever seen. In some ways, these children are the best sort of blessing!!!
In writing about Cell Therapy (above) I wished you folks to know two things: a) there is real, valid hope for people with so-called ‘incurable’ illnesses (even genetic ones) and b) the American health system has some serious weaknesses (a few are very deadly).
I heard about this by accident: We all know about ‘the power of bone marrow cells’. A Chicago-U researcher faced with the early death of a baby girl(None world-wide, survived beyond 2 years old.) tried implanting adult-mature bone marrow into her WHILE SHE WAS STILL IN UTERO (ie. developing in the womb) in hopes the transplanted cells would ‘teach’ the developing cells which way to go. On her 5th birthday, a very healthy little girl was pronounced ‘cured’.
THE RESEARCHER THOUGHT THIS TECHNIQUE COULD APPLY TO A LARGE NUMBER OF PEOPLE.
God bless Emmanuel and his wonderful parents. His life is precious and worth protecting at any stage pre-born or born, so are the lives of the millions slaughtered with DS, trisomy, etc. Every life is precious.
Prolifer L says:
July 22, 2012 at 1:09 am
God bless Emmanuel and his wonderful parents. His life is precious and worth protecting at any stage pre-born or born, so are the lives of the millions slaughtered with DS, trisomy, etc. Every life is precious.
(Denise) What about the life of a young lady who commits suicide in despair because she can’t stand completing her pregnancy?
What about the lives of women who have died in back alleys or because of self-induced abortions?
Denise, we love those women too. We offer the depressed pregnant mother whatever help she needs, so that she and her little one can be safe. Since most ‘back alley’ abortionists are medical professionals, we seek to expose them and shut them down. We treat women who engage in self harming behaviours with therapy and practical assistance. And we work to create a world where pregnancy is always cherished and supported.
What are you suggesting, Denise?
@Michelle PRCED: I too want a “world where pregnancy is always cherished and supported.” It represents terrible failure that so many pregnant girls and women abort. It seems to me that, while it may not be possible that every pregnancy be planned, it should be our goal that the only women who become pregnant are those prepared to have and raise babies.
What can we do to prevent pregnancies among those unwilling to carry to term and give birth?
That, IMO, is the root of abortion.