A year into a journey that doctors told him would end quickly and cruelly — because the aggressive form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis that was attacking the nerve cells in his brain and spinal cord and would rob him of his ability to move, speak and breathe — Chris Snow wasn’t just living. He was vibrantly alive.
ALS, popularly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, runs in Snow’s family. It had taken the life of his father, Bob, in nine months. It had taken the life of two uncles and a cousin. It has no cure.
But Snow’s early enrollment in a clinical gene therapy trial had produced amazingly good results.