Phoenix Officer Travels To Israel For ALS Treatment
 

Phoenix Officer Travels To Israel For ALS Treatment

POSTED: 4:02 pm PDT May 25, 2007
UPDATED: 4:11 pm PDT May 25, 2007

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PHOENIX -- CBS 5 first brought you the story of Officer Brian Howe a few weeks ago.

Howe is a Phoenix police officer battling ALS, or Lou Gherig's disease. The degenerative nerve and muscle disease has already stolen his ability to speak and now threatens to take his life.

Video:Watch the original story


Howe and his best friend recently went to Israel, where he underwent a highly experimental procedure.

J.J. Tuttle, a lieutenant with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, said there was never any doubt that he would accompany his best friend to Israel.

"It's just very difficult to watch your friend, your buddy, suffer, and you have to ask, 'Why?'" Tuttle said.

That's why Tuttle made the potentially life-saving trek with Howe for an experimental stem cell transplant.

Dr. Shimon Slavin is a professor and director of cell therapy and transplantation research at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem.

He took bone marrow from Howe with the hope that the marrow stem cells will eventually fuse with the degenerating nerve cells, transfer normal signals to the damaged cells, and ultimately result in nerve cell function.

The procedure offers no guarantees but plenty of hope.

"I think the outcome to this is we might have an answer here in a couple of months, hopefully," Tuttle said.

Howe's wife, Jacque, stayed home with the kids.

"I didn't want to leave the kids behind and both of us go over there," she said.

Howe stayed in constant contact via e-mail.

Howe is sore, tired and weighs a little less. And he isn't cured the way his children had hoped.

"They, I think, thought he was going to come back and be fixed. And that was really, I think, surprising to them when he got off the plane and we were there and, you know, they were kind of questioning that," Jacque Howe said.

"There's so many open-ended questions that we just don't know, that we just have to believe in faith. And just trust God in every decision and in every step of this procedure. And that's, I believe, what we're doing," Tuttle said.

Slavin emphasized that the procedure is part of research that is highly experimental and there is absolutely no proof or guarantee that it will work, and that it's not for just anyone.

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