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You are such an eloquent writer. Thank you for taking the time to do

this. We would be honored to be added to the list of parents, if it

is not too late.

Caroline Park and Roger Nye

- parents of Zeke. Zeke travelled from Samoa to Nebraska at age 6

months with his new family, Dr. Ponseti began treatment at 6.5 months

for bilateral club feet, and now at 2 1/4 months, Zeke just climbed

his first mountain walking, climbing and running all on his own.

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Ok, well, since this appears to be the way we're doing it...

Please add us ee; you really did a great job.

and Faith Slattery of Utah -- Parents of , born in Guam 21 Apr 04

with bilateral, atypical clubfeet. Traveled to Hawaii and then Atlanta only to

be told surgery was needed. At seven months we wemt to Iowa to see Ponseti. He

has had beautiful, pain-free feet since!

jubilantones wrote:

You are such an eloquent writer. Thank you for taking the time to do

this. We would be honored to be added to the list of parents, if it

is not too late.

Caroline Park and Roger Nye

- parents of Zeke. Zeke travelled from Samoa to Nebraska at age 6

months with his new family, Dr. Ponseti began treatment at 6.5 months

for bilateral club feet, and now at 2 1/4 months, Zeke just climbed

his first mountain walking, climbing and running all on his own.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok, well, since this appears to be the way we're doing it...

Please add us ee; you really did a great job.

and Faith Slattery of Utah -- Parents of , born in Guam 21 Apr 04

with bilateral, atypical clubfeet. Traveled to Hawaii and then Atlanta only to

be told surgery was needed. At seven months we wemt to Iowa to see Ponseti. He

has had beautiful, pain-free feet since!

jubilantones wrote:

You are such an eloquent writer. Thank you for taking the time to do

this. We would be honored to be added to the list of parents, if it

is not too late.

Caroline Park and Roger Nye

- parents of Zeke. Zeke travelled from Samoa to Nebraska at age 6

months with his new family, Dr. Ponseti began treatment at 6.5 months

for bilateral club feet, and now at 2 1/4 months, Zeke just climbed

his first mountain walking, climbing and running all on his own.

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Share on other sites

ee,

That is amazing. Please add our information to the list

ph and Grush of Malta, Idaho

Parents of Tenny Grush 7/15/04 Right Club Foot. perfectly corrected with the

Ponseti Method by Dr. Buzz Showalter, M.D. of Boise, Idaho.

's Dr. Ponseti Essay REVISED.doc

, and Everyone,

here is the email version for the Life Time Achievement Award Essay - (I'll

send an attachment version also for easier printing and/or editing if you

choose). I hope this is somewhere with in a hundred miles of what you were

anticipating. I asked Joyce Roller for more specifics but have not heard from

her, so I went with what I had and am sending it before you think I'm blowing

off my assignment here. Actually, ask my husband, I've lost a lot of sleep,

such a responsibility, such an important undertaking!

If it sucks I'm not offended if you scratch it out and start from scratch.

Woven throughout you will notice I used your key points. Likewise, if there is

any mis-information that needs corrected by all means bring it to my attention,

or if anyone has information prudent to the cause that I totally over looked,

that too should be brought forth! Because there was not a page limit / word

limit, I did not limit myself or even attempt to. It's double spaced and

justified for easier reading. Nor did I bring a case history of any particular

patient in to it, aiming to be objective and factual, yet tell the story in such

a way as to convey the man's compassion and the legitimacy of this birth defect.

I told it from the standpoint of " We the parents of children born with

clubfoot " ....I do not mean to exclude those here who are now adults who were

born with clubfoot, but the objective is to spread the word that new born babies

will not endure the tortures of misinformed doctors using out dated treatments.

And with all that as my disclaimer, sitting here insecurely as I toss out my

wares for inspection, here is the actual essay as it sits on my desk tonight.

Blessings to all,

ee

Dr. Ignacio Ponseti Lifetime Achievement Award Essay

by: ee Reese

September 2005

Five years after the Spanish military initiated an uprising against their own

Republican government sparking years of Civil War, lin D. Roosevelt made

his historic 3rd Inaugural Address to the Nation, Pearl Harbor was obliterated,

the famous Infamy Speech was delivered, and the United States, having already

suffered twelve years of economic collapse on the heels of fighting World War I,

entered World War II.

The year was 1941.

It was the year a young man immigrated to America from Spain to escape the

post civil war ravages in his homeland.

Historians suggest the Spanish Civil War which ejected this young doctor on to

American shores was merely a prelude to the World War that he traveled across

the Atlantic Ocean in effort to escape. They further suggest the Spanish war was

a testing ground, implying the bombing of Guernica promoted advances in

twentieth-century warfare techniques and technology.

Fortunately, this era brought forth amazing advances in medical technique and

technology as well - which also came from Spain.

His name was Ignacio Ponseti. He came to America an immigrant, a young doctor

escaping a war torn country to enter a country that was engaging into a war of

epic proportions that very same year. It was a small world after all.

Ultimately he arrived at the University of Iowa College of Medicine where his

assignment was to perform certain follow up studies on patients who had been

treated for clubfoot according to the " modern " medical standards of that time.

Disappointed with his findings, the young doctor dedicated his life to finding a

better way to cure this crippling birth defect.

Only seven years after his arrival to the United States, post war America was

a very different place. Luxury automobile owners were sporting the newly

invented electric car windows. Art Mooney was topping the charts with his hit

song I'm Looking Over A Four Leaf Clover; and fittingly with this new-found

era of American prosperity, our young Dr. Ponseti achieved his goal. In 1948,

through his years of dedicated hands on treatment and research, he discovered,

then refined, his non-surgical method for correcting clubfoot.

The glory of his work is that children no longer have to undergo painful

surgeries that most often result in a life time of painful feet and subsequent

surgeries.

The horror is that fifty-seven years after developing his method, the medical

community at large continues to practice according to the same techniques they

used half a century ago when he started, ignoring the Ponseti Method despite his

decades of follow up studies proving its 95% effectiveness rate when performed

properly.

In 1941 he was a Spanish Immigrant. Today, he is Professor Emeritus

Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. The doctor,

and his method, remain one of the world's best kept secrets as the medical

community continually refuses to adopt or even recognize the validity of his

method.

As the parents of children born with this vulgar, crippling, congenital birth

defect, we consider this unacceptable.

When he was 70 years old the University of Iowa, where he still practiced,

forced Dr. Ponseti to retire. Two years later, he convinced the University to

take him back despite his 'advanced' age. He continued to perform his miracle

on otherwise crippled babies for the next fourteen years.

When he was 84, he once again headed in to retirement - then the internet

happened. Word of his non-surgical method began to spread. As parents

discovered they had a choice, they began to travel from across the USA and from

across the ocean seeking out his method for their children. Today, twenty years

after the University tried to force him to quit, parents are still traveling to

see him, or one of his few qualified associates. And finally, after fifty odd

years of dedicated service, the University of Iowa Hospital finally recognized

Dr. Ponseti's contribution to both their facility and the medical field by

naming a branch of their clinic after the man who has given his life to giving

children happy feet.

Word continues to spread by mouth and internet about this astonishing,

dedicated man and his incredible journey that started half a world away a half a

century ago, but as the parents of children born with clubfoot we face two major

obstacles.

First, to be completely candid, time is ticking. Dr. Ponseti will celebrate

his 91st birthday in June of this year (2005) yet he continues to serve parents

and babies in his clinic at the University of Iowa - the oldest of hands gently

repairing the youngest of patients.

" Do not cry, Baby. " The gentle, quiet words roll off his tongue in a thick

Spanish accent that immediately begins to sooth the anxious child with their

music. " If you cry, then I will cry, and then my nurse will cry and then your

Ma'Ma will cry. We will all be crying! Do not cry, Baby. " and turning to the

mother, " Here Ma'Ma, take your baby, comfort him, I will not work on a crying

baby, let him calm down. " He points to the old rocking chair where he so often

sits to do his exams. The mother rocks her baby. The room smiles. The mother,

the father, the nurses, the students, and Dr. Ponseti, the 90 year old doctor

pauses in his work for as long as it takes as if this infant is the only infant

in the world and time has stood still for it.

He continues to teach any doctor willing to learn; he consults daily via email

and telephone not only with other doctors, but personally answering the calls of

distraught parents and sorting through the photos and videos parents send

showing their baby's feet at various stages of various treatments. He turns no

one away.

" You must come right away. " He is on the phone answering the email plea sent

with digital photos of a 19 month old boy with deformed feet despite a year and

a half of treatments and physical therapy. " I can help " , says the doctor, " but

there is no time to be lost, you must come right away. You get here and I will

see you. "

Because of the previous nineteen months of substandard treatment this child

will never be completely corrected nor ever know what it means to have pain-free

feet despite Dr. Ponseti's best efforts. But though his efforts, another

believer is born, who spreads the word of his miracles so no other child has to

endure what her son must endure.

Slowly, through the efforts of parents like us spreading the word and

insisting we have alternatives to surgery, the list of qualified Ponseti Method

physicians is growing annually. But time is ticking and the method is at risk

of being lost forever.

The second obstacle we face is the medical world, sadly enough. Through the

internet the term Ponseti Method has gained popularity, even if the actual

method has not. Suddenly the clinics are flooded with cheap imitations throwing

around the words " Ponseti Method " although they are not practicing the Ponseti

Method in any true form. These doctors are not skilled in the method, they have

received no formal training, and unfortunately, most parents don't know the

difference until it is too late, until they can no longer deny their child is

not getting any better and may in fact, be getting worse. So they finally do

their own research. They finally make that call, and Dr. Ponseti says to come

right away, because he always says come right away, because he always holds out

hope to the very end. Because every baby becomes his baby.

But these children do not always arrive in time to be rescued from their

horrible fate, because while clubfoot is nearly 100% correctable, there is a

limited window of opportunity that allows the miracle to take place. Once the

window is closed, the basic human anatomy of the foot no longer lets a

non-surgical correction happen. And if the baby arrives to Ponseti's care too

late, that baby will forever suffer the consequences of inadequate care.

With so many unqualified doctors suddenly claiming to use the Ponseti Method,

yet doing something quite different, the results are predictably disastrous.

Thus we risk that the method will be eventually proven ineffective as these

results are published and the public and medical communities combined rally

against the Ponseti Method for it's ineffectiveness with out realizing this lack

of success is not due to the method not working, but due to gross and

incompetent misuse of the method by untrained physicians.

And when the that happens, the method will be lost forever. There are already

claims that Ponseti's method is only perhaps 70, 60 or 50% effective - when in

fact, qualified doctors who use the method according to the protocol are

consistently achieving 95% success rates year after year after year.

And again we say, as the parents of babies born with this ugly, crippling

birth defect, this is completely unacceptable.

So how do we know? How is a parent who has just been dealt the crushing news

their baby has a major birth defect supposed to know the difference when any

doctor who has heard of clubfeet is suddenly proclaiming to be advanced in the

method of treating either though Ponseti's method or more traditional modes?

When a baby is born with a birth defect, and one as physically ugly as clubfoot

often is, a parent is eager to relieve their own sense of guilt and their

child's suffering. They often are so eager they blindly trust the local doctor

- after all, he's a doctor, he should know. And when we ask, when we finally

get around to noticing something is wrong and we ask, we are riddled with long

technical answers that leave us feeling inferior and confused and ashamed of

ourselves for questioning his superiority. So how do we know what to do?

Through public awareness like this, for starters.

In traditional treatments, the infant is often put through months of serial

casting where their foot is manually wrenched in to a normal looking position

and casted in to that shape as it grows. As recent as the 1960's, Dr. Dennis

Brown writes that he used mechanical devices to wrench the foot in to position

prior to casting. Somehow, the Foot Abduction Brace (FAB) which is used in the

Ponseti Method became known popularly as the Dennis Brown Bar, or DBB. (We call

it the FAB, wanting no association between Dr. Ponseti's gentle care and the

horrific mechanical tortures used by Dr. Brown.)

At the end of all this the child almost always undergoes corrective surgery

anyway because the bones remain misaligned. The surgery involves taking the

foot apart and reassembling it to look normal on the outside even though it has

been grossly disassembled and remains deformed on the inside. The result is the

bones are not allowed to grow naturally as they should; scar tissue builds up;

joints stiffen; tendons are unable to stretch; more surgeries become necessary

to loosen a tendon, to scrape out scar tissue, to add steel pins or remove

steel pins. And still the foot remains misshapen and painful to use, often not

fitting in any type of regular shoe.

The only thing the Ponseti Method has in common with the traditional method of

treatment is the term Serial Casting, which implies a series of casts are

applied to the child. In the 1940's Dr. Ponseti discovered what all the others

had overlooked - the delicate infrastructure of the foot and the logical,

sequential placement of it's twenty-six bones. The bones in a clubbed foot are

all there, they're really OK, but like a jigsaw puzzle, they come mixed up in

the box and need put back together to make the final picture. Traditional

methods of correction do not account for this. Traditional thinking seems to

believe the bones are wrong, that the bones need fixed. But they aren't wrong,

and they don't need fixed, they just need gentle hands and careful eyes placing

them in the correct spot like the intricate puzzle they are - not sawed upon to

fit where a doctor wants them or crammed in to positions where they were not

intended by nature to fit.

Treated properly by the Ponseti Method, the tiny new born bones are very

gently, slowly and methodically manipulated by gentle hands in to their proper

alignment where they are expertly casted in to place for a period of five to

seven days. Again and again the process is repeated over the course of

approximately five weeks - each bone individually identified, placed in its

necessary position according to a certain sequence of movements, and casted in

to place, maintained for approximately a week as the foot adapts.

Most infants sleep through the process as the doctor finds the correct bones

and moves them carefully, and always sequentially, in to their proper position

(compared to the physical restraint babies require using other methods). Others

eat or play. And almost none cry, because it is neither frightening nor

painful. No drugs are given, no shots, no restraints, the parents are always

present, holding or other wise comforting the baby, and if fear does creep in

and cause the child anxiety, the process is stopped until the baby is again

feeling calm and secure because an anxious child will be tense, and tense bones

and muscles cannot be properly aligned anyway. So the whole Ponseti Method

rests largely on maintaining a calm, happy baby though the correction process.

The entire visit is usually over with in less than a half an hour.

While we don't want Ponseti's method mixed up with any new-age mentality that

it ranks with acupuncture, herbs, aroma therapy or the beating of drums during

the twelfth hour of the full moon as Venus enters the shadow of Mars - neither

does this method belong to the ranks of sterile surgical rooms, recovery rooms,

antibiotics, stitches, face masks, needles, tubes or electronic monitoring

devices.

Completely scientific, completely proven, completely safe and effective, the

Ponseti Method is a very gentle and organic procedure saving children from their

crippling condition.

The average infant born with clubfoot has corrected, fully functional feet

with in five to seven weeks of serial casting when the casting is performed in

this manner. In other words, this child treated correctly by the Ponseti Method

will have normal feet before he is ever old enough to realize they were missing

in the first place.

When the manipulation of the bones is complete, the infant is moved out of

casting and in to the Foot Abduction Brace (FAB) - a small pair of baby booties

connected by a bar that runs between them. Set at very specific degrees and

measurements to match each individual infant, the baby wears this brace for 23

hours a day for the first three months of use. From there the amount of time

the baby wears the brace is gradually reduced to approximately twelve to

fourteen hours of wear - bed time - as the bones grow and experience their

natural hardening process. Unlike the unfortunate children who might wear the

casts for six to twelve months in the traditional methods, babies who wear the

FAB are not delayed in development. They can roll over, crawl, and eventually

cruise with the FAB on their feet meeting every milestone on time. They still

fit in to normal cloths, cribs, high chairs and car seats with the FAB on their

feet, it becomes only a small extension of the child, for a small part of their

life.

By the end of the treatment period, the feet have grown, the bones have

hardened as they do, and the correction is now maintained simply by the natural

growth and exercise of the foot. Because no bones were cut, lengthened or

shortened, no pins were surgically inserted, no tendons were cut, no muscles

were peeled back to expose the bones for surgery - there is nothing to heal,

nothing to infect, and nothing to malfunction. The entire foot can now grow and

function completely normally for the rest of that individual's life.

No surgical theaters. No anesthesia. No pain killers. No antibiotics. No

hospital stays. No IV's. No starving the infant for hours prior to the

operation. No separation of the infant from his parents. Reduced cost of

treatment. Ninety-five percent success rate. The promise of normal, natural

feet. No ugly scars on the outside of the skin, or crippling scar tissue

growing on the inside. Fifty years of use and follow up studies to back it.

And still, no one wants to listen.

And still, as the parents of children born with clubfoot, as citizens in the

most medically advanced nation on this earth, we find surgical treatment of

clubfoot not only barbaric, but irresponsible, negligent to the extent of

malpractice...and completely unacceptable.

Why then will no body listen?

Because we're talking about feet? Because there is no drama to a

non-surgical method? Ask the parents of children born with clubfoot if their

child's birth defect lacks drama.

According to the March of Dimes:

Neural Tube Defects (NTDs) affect 1 per 2,000 births.

Down Syndrome ranks at 1 in 800 births.

Sickle Cell Anemia affects from 1 in 500 to 1 in 1000 depending on racial

factors.

Cleft Palate affects 1 in 1000.

And Clubfoot is calculated to affect 1 in 735 births annually in the United

States, with higher rates abroad.

It can be estimated by 2002 population figures that Clubfoot affects

approximately 4,000 to 5,000 American newborn babies each year. More than

Neural Tube Defects. More than Down Syndrome. More than Cleft Palate. More or

the same as Sickle Cell Anemia

Even the March of Dimes remains unaware as their website suggests as many as

50% of the infants born with Clubfoot will require a surgical correction; that's

forty-five percent more surgeries than necessary. The Ponseti Method averages a

low 5 percent surgical rate.

But these are feet we're talking about, right? Who wants to pay any attention

to feet when there are much more exciting and dramatic (although less prevalent)

birth defects to talk about?

Why talk about a non-surgical medical procedure when there are much more

colorful, gruesome, theatrical surgeries to broadcast? Blood sells, right?

Images of oxygen masks, heart monitors, teams of doctors in their frocks hunched

over a patient who is cut wide open? Or a condition with no known cure? That's

good television. Sick children with no cure in sight. Twisted feet

torturously dissected is good television. A non-surgical method created by a

Spanish Civil War Veteran in 1948 who still practices at the age of 91 years old

- is also good television because behind the producer who has the guts to

broadcast this are 4,000 more babies being born this year who are at risk of

having their feet cut up unnecessarily - and you could save them.

We are here to nominate Doctor Ignacio Ponseti for the Lifetime Achievement

Award because he has truly given his life to these crippled babies. His entire

adult life, rapidly approaching a century old, has been dedicated to achieving

not personal goals for his own fame and fortune because if that were the case,

he and his method would be world famous by now! But to achieving a happy life

minus the pain of deformed feet for thousands of babies world wide. Abraham

Lincoln said it best, " I can't think if my feet hurt. " If ever a time in

history demanded our future generations have clear minds to think with, it is

now.

If awarded, Dr. Ponseti's wish is characteristically unselfish. When asked,

his only wish was that he be able to contribute more than he already has, that

his work be continued after he is gone though the veins of his foundation: The

Clubfoot Clinic Fund.

This foundation supports research of clubfoot so perhaps the one in a thousand

babies currently born in the US each year with this birth defect can be

diminished if not eliminated completely (scientists believe they have recently

isolated the gene that causes clubfoot); it supports the continued development

of better treatment options such as better casting materials and better designs

of the Foot Abduction Brace; it helps pay for treatments that otherwise could

not be afforded by economically challenged parents; it sends supplies and braces

to the poor and under-developed countries around the world; it supports bringing

in doctors from both America and over seas to train with Dr. Ponseti and his

colleagues in Iowa so they may take the method home and continue its use; it

funds the development of clubfoot clinics in 3rd world countries where the rate

of clubfoot per capita is much higher than it is here in the US.

Granted his wish, the sky would be the limit. More doctors could afford to

train under Dr. Ponseti; an educated medical community could identify and

eliminate from practice those who are performing the method falsely;

teleconferencing technology could be put in place so doctors world wide could

consult with one another directly, sharing video images, photos, x-rays, advice,

help and ultimately, success. Public awareness in the general population could

be raised so eventually no child will have to suffer the consequences of

treatment that became outdated three years after their great-grandparents came

home from WWII - because through public awareness, those methods would become

as happily obsolete as Art Mooney's 1948 top ten song.

Additionally, although Dr. Ponseti did not request this, we would like to

organize a reunion of his patients, both those who have been treated by his

gentle hands in person, and those who were treated by his method thanks to the

few doctors who have taken the time to learn it. We would like to publicly

honor the man who gave our children back their feet.

We nominate Dr. Ponseti not as a small group of mothers who meet at the coffee

shop with too much time on our hands - but as hundreds, if not thousands of

mothers, and fathers, and grandparents, aunts and uncles and children young and

old who have experienced clubfoot first hand, who have educated themselves,

their friends and their neighbors, who have continued for years now the daunting

task of speaking loudly that the world might finally listen and finally

eliminate the primitive treatments still in use today on our young babies.

We nominate Dr. Ponseti on behalf of the 45,000 (yes, forty-five thousand)

babies who will be born in the U.S. over the next ten years who will suffer

this birth defect.

It's been close to sixty years. It's time this great American story is told

to the world. It is time the world knew medical science has escaped the 1940's

and moved in to the twenty-first century.

He was an immigrant escaping the Spanish Civil War arriving in America the

year we entered World War II. Now he is a 91 year old doctor who still walks to

work each day to treat his tiniest of patients, because if not Dr. Ponseti,

then who? The world must learn and new young doctors must move in to fill the

shoes, to advance the method, to save the babies.

We, the parents of children born with clubfoot implore you to explore the rich

and colorful life of this silent American icon so he will not only get the

recognition he deserves after half a century of service, but also so no other

baby will have to endure the horrors of having their feet taken apart and put

artificially back together unnecessarily.

If nothing else happens from our attempt to honor Dr. Ponseti with the

Lifetime Achievement Award, one very key thing has happened right before your

very eyes: you, the reader, are now informed.

We the parents of children born with clubfoot have reached one more person,

who will, some day, tell two friends who will, someday, tell two friends. And

thus, the Ponseti Method has survived for half a century one person at a time -

and truly, that is probably the only reward Dr. Ponseti would ever ask for, that

the word be spread, even if by only one mouth and one ear at a time. He doesn't

want awards, he wants to see an end to the senseless brutality our trusted

doctors are inflicting upon our tiniest of babies. Once that is accomplished,

then, maybe then, he will finally feel it is safe for him to retire and pass his

torch to the next generation trusting we will keep it burning.

Summary and Contact Information:

There are two forms of clubfeet. The first is relatively minor and known as

Positional Clubfoot often due to a lack of amniotic fluid in the uterus cramping

the baby's development. The second is Congenital Clubfeet, it is considered

idiopathic, meaning doctors are not entirely sure what causes it , but suspect

it caused by an unknown genetic factor coming in to play affecting the baby at

approximately 20 weeks post conception. There also appears to be a slight

inheritance factor involved as well, although not always. Because clubfoot is

not present in the early weeks of development when most ultrasounds are

performed, the condition is often not discovered until the child's birth.

The Ponseti Method of Clubfoot correction is superior to the traditional

method of treatment in that the baby's bones are gently persuaded to move in to

their natural position through a process of systematic serial castings. No

surgeries take place. No bones are cut, broken, or pinned back together. No

muscles or tendons are stripped. No joints are penetrated. The method is

completely non-intrusive. Done correctly the foot is allowed to continue its

natural progression in to adulthood allowing these child to live normal, active

lives.

With correction performed properly by a qualified physician and with the

parent's diligent and dedicated use of the FAB (Foot Abduction Brace), babies

treated by the Ponseti Method enjoy a 95% success rate, i.e., 95% of the babies

will never need a surgical attempt at correction.

For more information about the clubfoot deformity, please contact the

University of Iowa Clubfoot Clinic at (319)356-3469 or visit

http://www.vh.org/pediatric/patient/orthopaedics/clubfeet/index.html for medical

reports, articles, FAQ's, testimonials and photos. Parents or family members of

a clubfooted baby are urged to join the nosurgery4clubfoot group at Yahoo!

groups, nosurgery4clubfoot for advice and support.

This Nomination is sent to you by the Parents of Children Born With Clubfoot

and the children born with clubfoot who became the victims of misinformed

doctors, as well as the children who have most blessedly been cured by the

life's work of Dr. Ignacio Ponseti - and all the clubfooted babies yet to

come.

Signed and Sincerely,

ee and Chriss Reese of Oklahoma

- parents of two clubfooted sons, who remains somewhat crippled because

we did not know yet about Dr. Ponseti, and Everett who enjoys perfect feet

thanks to Dr. Ponseti.

Harvey and June Reese of Oklahoma

- parents of one clubfooted child, Mark, who remains with crippled feet

because no one knew about the Ponseti Method.

Leroy Reese of Oklahoma

- father of one clubfooted son, Greg, who remains with crippled feet because

no one knew about the Ponseti Method.

Others add your names like this too and grow the list

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ee,

That is amazing. Please add our information to the list

ph and Grush of Malta, Idaho

Parents of Tenny Grush 7/15/04 Right Club Foot. perfectly corrected with the

Ponseti Method by Dr. Buzz Showalter, M.D. of Boise, Idaho.

's Dr. Ponseti Essay REVISED.doc

, and Everyone,

here is the email version for the Life Time Achievement Award Essay - (I'll

send an attachment version also for easier printing and/or editing if you

choose). I hope this is somewhere with in a hundred miles of what you were

anticipating. I asked Joyce Roller for more specifics but have not heard from

her, so I went with what I had and am sending it before you think I'm blowing

off my assignment here. Actually, ask my husband, I've lost a lot of sleep,

such a responsibility, such an important undertaking!

If it sucks I'm not offended if you scratch it out and start from scratch.

Woven throughout you will notice I used your key points. Likewise, if there is

any mis-information that needs corrected by all means bring it to my attention,

or if anyone has information prudent to the cause that I totally over looked,

that too should be brought forth! Because there was not a page limit / word

limit, I did not limit myself or even attempt to. It's double spaced and

justified for easier reading. Nor did I bring a case history of any particular

patient in to it, aiming to be objective and factual, yet tell the story in such

a way as to convey the man's compassion and the legitimacy of this birth defect.

I told it from the standpoint of " We the parents of children born with

clubfoot " ....I do not mean to exclude those here who are now adults who were

born with clubfoot, but the objective is to spread the word that new born babies

will not endure the tortures of misinformed doctors using out dated treatments.

And with all that as my disclaimer, sitting here insecurely as I toss out my

wares for inspection, here is the actual essay as it sits on my desk tonight.

Blessings to all,

ee

Dr. Ignacio Ponseti Lifetime Achievement Award Essay

by: ee Reese

September 2005

Five years after the Spanish military initiated an uprising against their own

Republican government sparking years of Civil War, lin D. Roosevelt made

his historic 3rd Inaugural Address to the Nation, Pearl Harbor was obliterated,

the famous Infamy Speech was delivered, and the United States, having already

suffered twelve years of economic collapse on the heels of fighting World War I,

entered World War II.

The year was 1941.

It was the year a young man immigrated to America from Spain to escape the

post civil war ravages in his homeland.

Historians suggest the Spanish Civil War which ejected this young doctor on to

American shores was merely a prelude to the World War that he traveled across

the Atlantic Ocean in effort to escape. They further suggest the Spanish war was

a testing ground, implying the bombing of Guernica promoted advances in

twentieth-century warfare techniques and technology.

Fortunately, this era brought forth amazing advances in medical technique and

technology as well - which also came from Spain.

His name was Ignacio Ponseti. He came to America an immigrant, a young doctor

escaping a war torn country to enter a country that was engaging into a war of

epic proportions that very same year. It was a small world after all.

Ultimately he arrived at the University of Iowa College of Medicine where his

assignment was to perform certain follow up studies on patients who had been

treated for clubfoot according to the " modern " medical standards of that time.

Disappointed with his findings, the young doctor dedicated his life to finding a

better way to cure this crippling birth defect.

Only seven years after his arrival to the United States, post war America was

a very different place. Luxury automobile owners were sporting the newly

invented electric car windows. Art Mooney was topping the charts with his hit

song I'm Looking Over A Four Leaf Clover; and fittingly with this new-found

era of American prosperity, our young Dr. Ponseti achieved his goal. In 1948,

through his years of dedicated hands on treatment and research, he discovered,

then refined, his non-surgical method for correcting clubfoot.

The glory of his work is that children no longer have to undergo painful

surgeries that most often result in a life time of painful feet and subsequent

surgeries.

The horror is that fifty-seven years after developing his method, the medical

community at large continues to practice according to the same techniques they

used half a century ago when he started, ignoring the Ponseti Method despite his

decades of follow up studies proving its 95% effectiveness rate when performed

properly.

In 1941 he was a Spanish Immigrant. Today, he is Professor Emeritus

Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. The doctor,

and his method, remain one of the world's best kept secrets as the medical

community continually refuses to adopt or even recognize the validity of his

method.

As the parents of children born with this vulgar, crippling, congenital birth

defect, we consider this unacceptable.

When he was 70 years old the University of Iowa, where he still practiced,

forced Dr. Ponseti to retire. Two years later, he convinced the University to

take him back despite his 'advanced' age. He continued to perform his miracle

on otherwise crippled babies for the next fourteen years.

When he was 84, he once again headed in to retirement - then the internet

happened. Word of his non-surgical method began to spread. As parents

discovered they had a choice, they began to travel from across the USA and from

across the ocean seeking out his method for their children. Today, twenty years

after the University tried to force him to quit, parents are still traveling to

see him, or one of his few qualified associates. And finally, after fifty odd

years of dedicated service, the University of Iowa Hospital finally recognized

Dr. Ponseti's contribution to both their facility and the medical field by

naming a branch of their clinic after the man who has given his life to giving

children happy feet.

Word continues to spread by mouth and internet about this astonishing,

dedicated man and his incredible journey that started half a world away a half a

century ago, but as the parents of children born with clubfoot we face two major

obstacles.

First, to be completely candid, time is ticking. Dr. Ponseti will celebrate

his 91st birthday in June of this year (2005) yet he continues to serve parents

and babies in his clinic at the University of Iowa - the oldest of hands gently

repairing the youngest of patients.

" Do not cry, Baby. " The gentle, quiet words roll off his tongue in a thick

Spanish accent that immediately begins to sooth the anxious child with their

music. " If you cry, then I will cry, and then my nurse will cry and then your

Ma'Ma will cry. We will all be crying! Do not cry, Baby. " and turning to the

mother, " Here Ma'Ma, take your baby, comfort him, I will not work on a crying

baby, let him calm down. " He points to the old rocking chair where he so often

sits to do his exams. The mother rocks her baby. The room smiles. The mother,

the father, the nurses, the students, and Dr. Ponseti, the 90 year old doctor

pauses in his work for as long as it takes as if this infant is the only infant

in the world and time has stood still for it.

He continues to teach any doctor willing to learn; he consults daily via email

and telephone not only with other doctors, but personally answering the calls of

distraught parents and sorting through the photos and videos parents send

showing their baby's feet at various stages of various treatments. He turns no

one away.

" You must come right away. " He is on the phone answering the email plea sent

with digital photos of a 19 month old boy with deformed feet despite a year and

a half of treatments and physical therapy. " I can help " , says the doctor, " but

there is no time to be lost, you must come right away. You get here and I will

see you. "

Because of the previous nineteen months of substandard treatment this child

will never be completely corrected nor ever know what it means to have pain-free

feet despite Dr. Ponseti's best efforts. But though his efforts, another

believer is born, who spreads the word of his miracles so no other child has to

endure what her son must endure.

Slowly, through the efforts of parents like us spreading the word and

insisting we have alternatives to surgery, the list of qualified Ponseti Method

physicians is growing annually. But time is ticking and the method is at risk

of being lost forever.

The second obstacle we face is the medical world, sadly enough. Through the

internet the term Ponseti Method has gained popularity, even if the actual

method has not. Suddenly the clinics are flooded with cheap imitations throwing

around the words " Ponseti Method " although they are not practicing the Ponseti

Method in any true form. These doctors are not skilled in the method, they have

received no formal training, and unfortunately, most parents don't know the

difference until it is too late, until they can no longer deny their child is

not getting any better and may in fact, be getting worse. So they finally do

their own research. They finally make that call, and Dr. Ponseti says to come

right away, because he always says come right away, because he always holds out

hope to the very end. Because every baby becomes his baby.

But these children do not always arrive in time to be rescued from their

horrible fate, because while clubfoot is nearly 100% correctable, there is a

limited window of opportunity that allows the miracle to take place. Once the

window is closed, the basic human anatomy of the foot no longer lets a

non-surgical correction happen. And if the baby arrives to Ponseti's care too

late, that baby will forever suffer the consequences of inadequate care.

With so many unqualified doctors suddenly claiming to use the Ponseti Method,

yet doing something quite different, the results are predictably disastrous.

Thus we risk that the method will be eventually proven ineffective as these

results are published and the public and medical communities combined rally

against the Ponseti Method for it's ineffectiveness with out realizing this lack

of success is not due to the method not working, but due to gross and

incompetent misuse of the method by untrained physicians.

And when the that happens, the method will be lost forever. There are already

claims that Ponseti's method is only perhaps 70, 60 or 50% effective - when in

fact, qualified doctors who use the method according to the protocol are

consistently achieving 95% success rates year after year after year.

And again we say, as the parents of babies born with this ugly, crippling

birth defect, this is completely unacceptable.

So how do we know? How is a parent who has just been dealt the crushing news

their baby has a major birth defect supposed to know the difference when any

doctor who has heard of clubfeet is suddenly proclaiming to be advanced in the

method of treating either though Ponseti's method or more traditional modes?

When a baby is born with a birth defect, and one as physically ugly as clubfoot

often is, a parent is eager to relieve their own sense of guilt and their

child's suffering. They often are so eager they blindly trust the local doctor

- after all, he's a doctor, he should know. And when we ask, when we finally

get around to noticing something is wrong and we ask, we are riddled with long

technical answers that leave us feeling inferior and confused and ashamed of

ourselves for questioning his superiority. So how do we know what to do?

Through public awareness like this, for starters.

In traditional treatments, the infant is often put through months of serial

casting where their foot is manually wrenched in to a normal looking position

and casted in to that shape as it grows. As recent as the 1960's, Dr. Dennis

Brown writes that he used mechanical devices to wrench the foot in to position

prior to casting. Somehow, the Foot Abduction Brace (FAB) which is used in the

Ponseti Method became known popularly as the Dennis Brown Bar, or DBB. (We call

it the FAB, wanting no association between Dr. Ponseti's gentle care and the

horrific mechanical tortures used by Dr. Brown.)

At the end of all this the child almost always undergoes corrective surgery

anyway because the bones remain misaligned. The surgery involves taking the

foot apart and reassembling it to look normal on the outside even though it has

been grossly disassembled and remains deformed on the inside. The result is the

bones are not allowed to grow naturally as they should; scar tissue builds up;

joints stiffen; tendons are unable to stretch; more surgeries become necessary

to loosen a tendon, to scrape out scar tissue, to add steel pins or remove

steel pins. And still the foot remains misshapen and painful to use, often not

fitting in any type of regular shoe.

The only thing the Ponseti Method has in common with the traditional method of

treatment is the term Serial Casting, which implies a series of casts are

applied to the child. In the 1940's Dr. Ponseti discovered what all the others

had overlooked - the delicate infrastructure of the foot and the logical,

sequential placement of it's twenty-six bones. The bones in a clubbed foot are

all there, they're really OK, but like a jigsaw puzzle, they come mixed up in

the box and need put back together to make the final picture. Traditional

methods of correction do not account for this. Traditional thinking seems to

believe the bones are wrong, that the bones need fixed. But they aren't wrong,

and they don't need fixed, they just need gentle hands and careful eyes placing

them in the correct spot like the intricate puzzle they are - not sawed upon to

fit where a doctor wants them or crammed in to positions where they were not

intended by nature to fit.

Treated properly by the Ponseti Method, the tiny new born bones are very

gently, slowly and methodically manipulated by gentle hands in to their proper

alignment where they are expertly casted in to place for a period of five to

seven days. Again and again the process is repeated over the course of

approximately five weeks - each bone individually identified, placed in its

necessary position according to a certain sequence of movements, and casted in

to place, maintained for approximately a week as the foot adapts.

Most infants sleep through the process as the doctor finds the correct bones

and moves them carefully, and always sequentially, in to their proper position

(compared to the physical restraint babies require using other methods). Others

eat or play. And almost none cry, because it is neither frightening nor

painful. No drugs are given, no shots, no restraints, the parents are always

present, holding or other wise comforting the baby, and if fear does creep in

and cause the child anxiety, the process is stopped until the baby is again

feeling calm and secure because an anxious child will be tense, and tense bones

and muscles cannot be properly aligned anyway. So the whole Ponseti Method

rests largely on maintaining a calm, happy baby though the correction process.

The entire visit is usually over with in less than a half an hour.

While we don't want Ponseti's method mixed up with any new-age mentality that

it ranks with acupuncture, herbs, aroma therapy or the beating of drums during

the twelfth hour of the full moon as Venus enters the shadow of Mars - neither

does this method belong to the ranks of sterile surgical rooms, recovery rooms,

antibiotics, stitches, face masks, needles, tubes or electronic monitoring

devices.

Completely scientific, completely proven, completely safe and effective, the

Ponseti Method is a very gentle and organic procedure saving children from their

crippling condition.

The average infant born with clubfoot has corrected, fully functional feet

with in five to seven weeks of serial casting when the casting is performed in

this manner. In other words, this child treated correctly by the Ponseti Method

will have normal feet before he is ever old enough to realize they were missing

in the first place.

When the manipulation of the bones is complete, the infant is moved out of

casting and in to the Foot Abduction Brace (FAB) - a small pair of baby booties

connected by a bar that runs between them. Set at very specific degrees and

measurements to match each individual infant, the baby wears this brace for 23

hours a day for the first three months of use. From there the amount of time

the baby wears the brace is gradually reduced to approximately twelve to

fourteen hours of wear - bed time - as the bones grow and experience their

natural hardening process. Unlike the unfortunate children who might wear the

casts for six to twelve months in the traditional methods, babies who wear the

FAB are not delayed in development. They can roll over, crawl, and eventually

cruise with the FAB on their feet meeting every milestone on time. They still

fit in to normal cloths, cribs, high chairs and car seats with the FAB on their

feet, it becomes only a small extension of the child, for a small part of their

life.

By the end of the treatment period, the feet have grown, the bones have

hardened as they do, and the correction is now maintained simply by the natural

growth and exercise of the foot. Because no bones were cut, lengthened or

shortened, no pins were surgically inserted, no tendons were cut, no muscles

were peeled back to expose the bones for surgery - there is nothing to heal,

nothing to infect, and nothing to malfunction. The entire foot can now grow and

function completely normally for the rest of that individual's life.

No surgical theaters. No anesthesia. No pain killers. No antibiotics. No

hospital stays. No IV's. No starving the infant for hours prior to the

operation. No separation of the infant from his parents. Reduced cost of

treatment. Ninety-five percent success rate. The promise of normal, natural

feet. No ugly scars on the outside of the skin, or crippling scar tissue

growing on the inside. Fifty years of use and follow up studies to back it.

And still, no one wants to listen.

And still, as the parents of children born with clubfoot, as citizens in the

most medically advanced nation on this earth, we find surgical treatment of

clubfoot not only barbaric, but irresponsible, negligent to the extent of

malpractice...and completely unacceptable.

Why then will no body listen?

Because we're talking about feet? Because there is no drama to a

non-surgical method? Ask the parents of children born with clubfoot if their

child's birth defect lacks drama.

According to the March of Dimes:

Neural Tube Defects (NTDs) affect 1 per 2,000 births.

Down Syndrome ranks at 1 in 800 births.

Sickle Cell Anemia affects from 1 in 500 to 1 in 1000 depending on racial

factors.

Cleft Palate affects 1 in 1000.

And Clubfoot is calculated to affect 1 in 735 births annually in the United

States, with higher rates abroad.

It can be estimated by 2002 population figures that Clubfoot affects

approximately 4,000 to 5,000 American newborn babies each year. More than

Neural Tube Defects. More than Down Syndrome. More than Cleft Palate. More or

the same as Sickle Cell Anemia

Even the March of Dimes remains unaware as their website suggests as many as

50% of the infants born with Clubfoot will require a surgical correction; that's

forty-five percent more surgeries than necessary. The Ponseti Method averages a

low 5 percent surgical rate.

But these are feet we're talking about, right? Who wants to pay any attention

to feet when there are much more exciting and dramatic (although less prevalent)

birth defects to talk about?

Why talk about a non-surgical medical procedure when there are much more

colorful, gruesome, theatrical surgeries to broadcast? Blood sells, right?

Images of oxygen masks, heart monitors, teams of doctors in their frocks hunched

over a patient who is cut wide open? Or a condition with no known cure? That's

good television. Sick children with no cure in sight. Twisted feet

torturously dissected is good television. A non-surgical method created by a

Spanish Civil War Veteran in 1948 who still practices at the age of 91 years old

- is also good television because behind the producer who has the guts to

broadcast this are 4,000 more babies being born this year who are at risk of

having their feet cut up unnecessarily - and you could save them.

We are here to nominate Doctor Ignacio Ponseti for the Lifetime Achievement

Award because he has truly given his life to these crippled babies. His entire

adult life, rapidly approaching a century old, has been dedicated to achieving

not personal goals for his own fame and fortune because if that were the case,

he and his method would be world famous by now! But to achieving a happy life

minus the pain of deformed feet for thousands of babies world wide. Abraham

Lincoln said it best, " I can't think if my feet hurt. " If ever a time in

history demanded our future generations have clear minds to think with, it is

now.

If awarded, Dr. Ponseti's wish is characteristically unselfish. When asked,

his only wish was that he be able to contribute more than he already has, that

his work be continued after he is gone though the veins of his foundation: The

Clubfoot Clinic Fund.

This foundation supports research of clubfoot so perhaps the one in a thousand

babies currently born in the US each year with this birth defect can be

diminished if not eliminated completely (scientists believe they have recently

isolated the gene that causes clubfoot); it supports the continued development

of better treatment options such as better casting materials and better designs

of the Foot Abduction Brace; it helps pay for treatments that otherwise could

not be afforded by economically challenged parents; it sends supplies and braces

to the poor and under-developed countries around the world; it supports bringing

in doctors from both America and over seas to train with Dr. Ponseti and his

colleagues in Iowa so they may take the method home and continue its use; it

funds the development of clubfoot clinics in 3rd world countries where the rate

of clubfoot per capita is much higher than it is here in the US.

Granted his wish, the sky would be the limit. More doctors could afford to

train under Dr. Ponseti; an educated medical community could identify and

eliminate from practice those who are performing the method falsely;

teleconferencing technology could be put in place so doctors world wide could

consult with one another directly, sharing video images, photos, x-rays, advice,

help and ultimately, success. Public awareness in the general population could

be raised so eventually no child will have to suffer the consequences of

treatment that became outdated three years after their great-grandparents came

home from WWII - because through public awareness, those methods would become

as happily obsolete as Art Mooney's 1948 top ten song.

Additionally, although Dr. Ponseti did not request this, we would like to

organize a reunion of his patients, both those who have been treated by his

gentle hands in person, and those who were treated by his method thanks to the

few doctors who have taken the time to learn it. We would like to publicly

honor the man who gave our children back their feet.

We nominate Dr. Ponseti not as a small group of mothers who meet at the coffee

shop with too much time on our hands - but as hundreds, if not thousands of

mothers, and fathers, and grandparents, aunts and uncles and children young and

old who have experienced clubfoot first hand, who have educated themselves,

their friends and their neighbors, who have continued for years now the daunting

task of speaking loudly that the world might finally listen and finally

eliminate the primitive treatments still in use today on our young babies.

We nominate Dr. Ponseti on behalf of the 45,000 (yes, forty-five thousand)

babies who will be born in the U.S. over the next ten years who will suffer

this birth defect.

It's been close to sixty years. It's time this great American story is told

to the world. It is time the world knew medical science has escaped the 1940's

and moved in to the twenty-first century.

He was an immigrant escaping the Spanish Civil War arriving in America the

year we entered World War II. Now he is a 91 year old doctor who still walks to

work each day to treat his tiniest of patients, because if not Dr. Ponseti,

then who? The world must learn and new young doctors must move in to fill the

shoes, to advance the method, to save the babies.

We, the parents of children born with clubfoot implore you to explore the rich

and colorful life of this silent American icon so he will not only get the

recognition he deserves after half a century of service, but also so no other

baby will have to endure the horrors of having their feet taken apart and put

artificially back together unnecessarily.

If nothing else happens from our attempt to honor Dr. Ponseti with the

Lifetime Achievement Award, one very key thing has happened right before your

very eyes: you, the reader, are now informed.

We the parents of children born with clubfoot have reached one more person,

who will, some day, tell two friends who will, someday, tell two friends. And

thus, the Ponseti Method has survived for half a century one person at a time -

and truly, that is probably the only reward Dr. Ponseti would ever ask for, that

the word be spread, even if by only one mouth and one ear at a time. He doesn't

want awards, he wants to see an end to the senseless brutality our trusted

doctors are inflicting upon our tiniest of babies. Once that is accomplished,

then, maybe then, he will finally feel it is safe for him to retire and pass his

torch to the next generation trusting we will keep it burning.

Summary and Contact Information:

There are two forms of clubfeet. The first is relatively minor and known as

Positional Clubfoot often due to a lack of amniotic fluid in the uterus cramping

the baby's development. The second is Congenital Clubfeet, it is considered

idiopathic, meaning doctors are not entirely sure what causes it , but suspect

it caused by an unknown genetic factor coming in to play affecting the baby at

approximately 20 weeks post conception. There also appears to be a slight

inheritance factor involved as well, although not always. Because clubfoot is

not present in the early weeks of development when most ultrasounds are

performed, the condition is often not discovered until the child's birth.

The Ponseti Method of Clubfoot correction is superior to the traditional

method of treatment in that the baby's bones are gently persuaded to move in to

their natural position through a process of systematic serial castings. No

surgeries take place. No bones are cut, broken, or pinned back together. No

muscles or tendons are stripped. No joints are penetrated. The method is

completely non-intrusive. Done correctly the foot is allowed to continue its

natural progression in to adulthood allowing these child to live normal, active

lives.

With correction performed properly by a qualified physician and with the

parent's diligent and dedicated use of the FAB (Foot Abduction Brace), babies

treated by the Ponseti Method enjoy a 95% success rate, i.e., 95% of the babies

will never need a surgical attempt at correction.

For more information about the clubfoot deformity, please contact the

University of Iowa Clubfoot Clinic at (319)356-3469 or visit

http://www.vh.org/pediatric/patient/orthopaedics/clubfeet/index.html for medical

reports, articles, FAQ's, testimonials and photos. Parents or family members of

a clubfooted baby are urged to join the nosurgery4clubfoot group at Yahoo!

groups, nosurgery4clubfoot for advice and support.

This Nomination is sent to you by the Parents of Children Born With Clubfoot

and the children born with clubfoot who became the victims of misinformed

doctors, as well as the children who have most blessedly been cured by the

life's work of Dr. Ignacio Ponseti - and all the clubfooted babies yet to

come.

Signed and Sincerely,

ee and Chriss Reese of Oklahoma

- parents of two clubfooted sons, who remains somewhat crippled because

we did not know yet about Dr. Ponseti, and Everett who enjoys perfect feet

thanks to Dr. Ponseti.

Harvey and June Reese of Oklahoma

- parents of one clubfooted child, Mark, who remains with crippled feet

because no one knew about the Ponseti Method.

Leroy Reese of Oklahoma

- father of one clubfooted son, Greg, who remains with crippled feet because

no one knew about the Ponseti Method.

Others add your names like this too and grow the list

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The essay sounds great and we'd love to be aded to the list

Kathy Bruce and Bates, Brighton UK, Parents to Ethan, bilateral, atypical

clubfoot. Successfully undertaking Ponseti method after being transfered to

Naomi - Ponseti trained Doctor, Manchester UK.

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The essay sounds great and we'd love to be aded to the list

Kathy Bruce and Bates, Brighton UK, Parents to Ethan, bilateral, atypical

clubfoot. Successfully undertaking Ponseti method after being transfered to

Naomi - Ponseti trained Doctor, Manchester UK.

---------------------------------

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Thanks everybody - I'm going to leave this to 's disgression, she's the

one heading this up (at least I thought so!). You all do what you want with

it, like I said before.

s.

Re: 's Dr. Ponseti Essay REVISED.doc

ee, this is great!

I'd love to add my family's names to this as well.

and Houdek of Minneapolis, MN, - Parents of one

clubfooted son, Aleksander, with two beautiful feet thanks to the

Ponseti Method.

> , and Everyone,

> here is the email version for the Life Time Achievement Award

Essay - (I'll send an attachment version also for easier printing

and/or editing if you choose). I hope this is somewhere with in a

hundred miles of what you were anticipating. I asked Joyce Roller

for more specifics but have not heard from her, so I went with what I

had and am sending it before you think I'm blowing off my assignment

here. Actually, ask my husband, I've lost a lot of sleep, such a

responsibility, such an important undertaking!

>

> If it sucks I'm not offended if you scratch it out and start from

scratch. Woven throughout you will notice I used your key points.

Likewise, if there is any mis-information that needs corrected by all

means bring it to my attention, or if anyone has information prudent

to the cause that I totally over looked, that too should be brought

forth! Because there was not a page limit / word limit, I did not

limit myself or even attempt to. It's double spaced and justified

for easier reading. Nor did I bring a case history of any

particular patient in to it, aiming to be objective and factual, yet

tell the story in such a way as to convey the man's compassion and

the legitimacy of this birth defect. I told it from the standpoint

of " We the parents of children born with clubfoot " ....I do not mean

to exclude those here who are now adults who were born with clubfoot,

but the objective is to spread the word that new born babies will not

endure the tortures of misinformed doctors using out dated treatments.

>

> And with all that as my disclaimer, sitting here insecurely as I

toss out my wares for inspection, here is the actual essay as it sits

on my desk tonight.

> Blessings to all,

> ee

>

>

>

> Dr. Ignacio Ponseti Lifetime Achievement Award Essay

>

> by: ee Reese

> September 2005

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

> Five years after the Spanish military initiated an uprising against

their own Republican government sparking years of Civil War, lin

D. Roosevelt made his historic 3rd Inaugural Address to the Nation,

Pearl Harbor was obliterated, the famous Infamy Speech was delivered,

and the United States, having already suffered twelve years of

economic collapse on the heels of fighting World War I, entered World

War II.

>

> The year was 1941.

> It was the year a young man immigrated to America from Spain to

escape the post civil war ravages in his homeland.

>

> Historians suggest the Spanish Civil War which ejected this young

doctor on to American shores was merely a prelude to the World War

that he traveled across the Atlantic Ocean in effort to escape. They

further suggest the Spanish war was a testing ground, implying the

bombing of Guernica promoted advances in twentieth-century warfare

techniques and technology.

>

> Fortunately, this era brought forth amazing advances in medical

technique and technology as well - which also came from Spain.

>

> His name was Ignacio Ponseti. He came to America an immigrant, a

young doctor escaping a war torn country to enter a country that was

engaging into a war of epic proportions that very same year. It was

a small world after all.

>

> Ultimately he arrived at the University of Iowa College of Medicine

where his assignment was to perform certain follow up studies on

patients who had been treated for clubfoot according to the " modern "

medical standards of that time. Disappointed with his findings, the

young doctor dedicated his life to finding a better way to cure this

crippling birth defect.

> Only seven years after his arrival to the United States, post war

America was a very different place. Luxury automobile owners were

sporting the newly invented electric car windows. Art Mooney was

topping the charts with his hit song I'm Looking Over A Four Leaf

Clover; and fittingly with this new-found era of American

prosperity, our young Dr. Ponseti achieved his goal. In 1948,

through his years of dedicated hands on treatment and research, he

discovered, then refined, his non-surgical method for correcting

clubfoot.

>

> The glory of his work is that children no longer have to undergo

painful surgeries that most often result in a life time of painful

feet and subsequent surgeries.

> The horror is that fifty-seven years after developing his method,

the medical community at large continues to practice according to the

same techniques they used half a century ago when he started,

ignoring the Ponseti Method despite his decades of follow up studies

proving its 95% effectiveness rate when performed properly.

>

> In 1941 he was a Spanish Immigrant. Today, he is Professor

Emeritus Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Iowa College of

Medicine. The doctor, and his method, remain one of the world's

best kept secrets as the medical community continually refuses to

adopt or even recognize the validity of his method.

>

> As the parents of children born with this vulgar, crippling,

congenital birth defect, we consider this unacceptable.

>

> When he was 70 years old the University of Iowa, where he still

practiced, forced Dr. Ponseti to retire. Two years later, he

convinced the University to take him back despite his 'advanced'

age. He continued to perform his miracle on otherwise crippled

babies for the next fourteen years.

>

> When he was 84, he once again headed in to retirement - then the

internet happened. Word of his non-surgical method began to

spread. As parents discovered they had a choice, they began to

travel from across the USA and from across the ocean seeking out his

method for their children. Today, twenty years after the University

tried to force him to quit, parents are still traveling to see him,

or one of his few qualified associates. And finally, after fifty

odd years of dedicated service, the University of Iowa Hospital

finally recognized Dr. Ponseti's contribution to both their facility

and the medical field by naming a branch of their clinic after the

man who has given his life to giving children happy feet.

> Word continues to spread by mouth and internet about this

astonishing, dedicated man and his incredible journey that started

half a world away a half a century ago, but as the parents of

children born with clubfoot we face two major obstacles.

> First, to be completely candid, time is ticking. Dr. Ponseti

will celebrate his 91st birthday in June of this year (2005) yet he

continues to serve parents and babies in his clinic at the University

of Iowa - the oldest of hands gently repairing the youngest of

patients.

> " Do not cry, Baby. " The gentle, quiet words roll off his tongue in

a thick Spanish accent that immediately begins to sooth the anxious

child with their music. " If you cry, then I will cry, and then my

nurse will cry and then your Ma'Ma will cry. We will all be crying!

Do not cry, Baby. " and turning to the mother, " Here Ma'Ma, take your

baby, comfort him, I will not work on a crying baby, let him calm

down. " He points to the old rocking chair where he so often sits to

do his exams. The mother rocks her baby. The room smiles. The

mother, the father, the nurses, the students, and Dr. Ponseti, the

90 year old doctor pauses in his work for as long as it takes as if

this infant is the only infant in the world and time has stood still

for it.

>

> He continues to teach any doctor willing to learn; he consults

daily via email and telephone not only with other doctors, but

personally answering the calls of distraught parents and sorting

through the photos and videos parents send showing their baby's feet

at various stages of various treatments. He turns no one away.

> " You must come right away. " He is on the phone answering the

email plea sent with digital photos of a 19 month old boy with

deformed feet despite a year and a half of treatments and physical

therapy. " I can help " , says the doctor, " but there is no time to be

lost, you must come right away. You get here and I will see you. "

> Because of the previous nineteen months of substandard treatment

this child will never be completely corrected nor ever know what it

means to have pain-free feet despite Dr. Ponseti's best efforts. But

though his efforts, another believer is born, who spreads the word of

his miracles so no other child has to endure what her son must endure.

> Slowly, through the efforts of parents like us spreading the word

and insisting we have alternatives to surgery, the list of qualified

Ponseti Method physicians is growing annually. But time is ticking

and the method is at risk of being lost forever.

>

> The second obstacle we face is the medical world, sadly enough.

Through the internet the term Ponseti Method has gained popularity,

even if the actual method has not. Suddenly the clinics are flooded

with cheap imitations throwing around the words " Ponseti Method "

although they are not practicing the Ponseti Method in any true form.

These doctors are not skilled in the method, they have received no

formal training, and unfortunately, most parents don't know the

difference until it is too late, until they can no longer deny their

child is not getting any better and may in fact, be getting worse.

So they finally do their own research. They finally make that call,

and Dr. Ponseti says to come right away, because he always says come

right away, because he always holds out hope to the very end.

Because every baby becomes his baby.

> But these children do not always arrive in time to be rescued from

their horrible fate, because while clubfoot is nearly 100%

correctable, there is a limited window of opportunity that allows the

miracle to take place. Once the window is closed, the basic human

anatomy of the foot no longer lets a non-surgical correction happen.

And if the baby arrives to Ponseti's care too late, that baby will

forever suffer the consequences of inadequate care.

> With so many unqualified doctors suddenly claiming to use the

Ponseti Method, yet doing something quite different, the results are

predictably disastrous. Thus we risk that the method will be

eventually proven ineffective as these results are published and the

public and medical communities combined rally against the Ponseti

Method for it's ineffectiveness with out realizing this lack of

success is not due to the method not working, but due to gross and

incompetent misuse of the method by untrained physicians.

>

> And when the that happens, the method will be lost forever. There

are already claims that Ponseti's method is only perhaps 70, 60 or

50% effective - when in fact, qualified doctors who use the method

according to the protocol are consistently achieving 95% success

rates year after year after year.

>

> And again we say, as the parents of babies born with this ugly,

crippling birth defect, this is completely unacceptable.

>

> So how do we know? How is a parent who has just been dealt the

crushing news their baby has a major birth defect supposed to know

the difference when any doctor who has heard of clubfeet is suddenly

proclaiming to be advanced in the method of treating either though

Ponseti's method or more traditional modes? When a baby is born with

a birth defect, and one as physically ugly as clubfoot often is, a

parent is eager to relieve their own sense of guilt and their

child's suffering. They often are so eager they blindly trust the

local doctor - after all, he's a doctor, he should know. And when we

ask, when we finally get around to noticing something is wrong and we

ask, we are riddled with long technical answers that leave us feeling

inferior and confused and ashamed of ourselves for questioning his

superiority. So how do we know what to do?

>

> Through public awareness like this, for starters.

>

> In traditional treatments, the infant is often put through months

of serial casting where their foot is manually wrenched in to a

normal looking position and casted in to that shape as it grows. As

recent as the 1960's, Dr. Dennis Brown writes that he used mechanical

devices to wrench the foot in to position prior to casting. Somehow,

the Foot Abduction Brace (FAB) which is used in the Ponseti Method

became known popularly as the Dennis Brown Bar, or DBB. (We call it

the FAB, wanting no association between Dr. Ponseti's gentle care and

the horrific mechanical tortures used by Dr. Brown.)

> At the end of all this the child almost always undergoes corrective

surgery anyway because the bones remain misaligned. The surgery

involves taking the foot apart and reassembling it to look normal on

the outside even though it has been grossly disassembled and remains

deformed on the inside. The result is the bones are not allowed to

grow naturally as they should; scar tissue builds up; joints stiffen;

tendons are unable to stretch; more surgeries become necessary to

loosen a tendon, to scrape out scar tissue, to add steel pins or

remove steel pins. And still the foot remains misshapen and painful

to use, often not fitting in any type of regular shoe.

> The only thing the Ponseti Method has in common with the

traditional method of treatment is the term Serial Casting, which

implies a series of casts are applied to the child. In the 1940's

Dr. Ponseti discovered what all the others had overlooked - the

delicate infrastructure of the foot and the logical, sequential

placement of it's twenty-six bones. The bones in a clubbed foot are

all there, they're really OK, but like a jigsaw puzzle, they come

mixed up in the box and need put back together to make the final

picture. Traditional methods of correction do not account for this.

Traditional thinking seems to believe the bones are wrong, that the

bones need fixed. But they aren't wrong, and they don't need fixed,

they just need gentle hands and careful eyes placing them in the

correct spot like the intricate puzzle they are - not sawed upon to

fit where a doctor wants them or crammed in to positions where they

were not intended by nature to fit.

>

> Treated properly by the Ponseti Method, the tiny new born bones are

very gently, slowly and methodically manipulated by gentle hands in

to their proper alignment where they are expertly casted in to place

for a period of five to seven days. Again and again the process is

repeated over the course of approximately five weeks - each bone

individually identified, placed in its necessary position according

to a certain sequence of movements, and casted in to place,

maintained for approximately a week as the foot adapts.

> Most infants sleep through the process as the doctor finds the

correct bones and moves them carefully, and always sequentially, in

to their proper position (compared to the physical restraint babies

require using other methods). Others eat or play. And almost none

cry, because it is neither frightening nor painful. No drugs are

given, no shots, no restraints, the parents are always present,

holding or other wise comforting the baby, and if fear does creep in

and cause the child anxiety, the process is stopped until the baby is

again feeling calm and secure because an anxious child will be tense,

and tense bones and muscles cannot be properly aligned anyway. So

the whole Ponseti Method rests largely on maintaining a calm, happy

baby though the correction process. The entire visit is usually over

with in less than a half an hour.

>

> While we don't want Ponseti's method mixed up with any new-age

mentality that it ranks with acupuncture, herbs, aroma therapy or the

beating of drums during the twelfth hour of the full moon as Venus

enters the shadow of Mars - neither does this method belong to the

ranks of sterile surgical rooms, recovery rooms, antibiotics,

stitches, face masks, needles, tubes or electronic monitoring

devices.

> Completely scientific, completely proven, completely safe and

effective, the Ponseti Method is a very gentle and organic procedure

saving children from their crippling condition.

> The average infant born with clubfoot has corrected, fully

functional feet with in five to seven weeks of serial casting when

the casting is performed in this manner. In other words, this child

treated correctly by the Ponseti Method will have normal feet before

he is ever old enough to realize they were missing in the first place.

>

> When the manipulation of the bones is complete, the infant is

moved out of casting and in to the Foot Abduction Brace (FAB) - a

small pair of baby booties connected by a bar that runs between

them. Set at very specific degrees and measurements to match each

individual infant, the baby wears this brace for 23 hours a day for

the first three months of use. From there the amount of time the

baby wears the brace is gradually reduced to approximately twelve to

fourteen hours of wear - bed time - as the bones grow and experience

their natural hardening process. Unlike the unfortunate children

who might wear the casts for six to twelve months in the traditional

methods, babies who wear the FAB are not delayed in development.

They can roll over, crawl, and eventually cruise with the FAB on

their feet meeting every milestone on time. They still fit in to

normal cloths, cribs, high chairs and car seats with the FAB on their

feet, it becomes only a small extension of the child, for a small

part of their life.

>

> By the end of the treatment period, the feet have grown, the bones

have hardened as they do, and the correction is now maintained simply

by the natural growth and exercise of the foot. Because no bones

were cut, lengthened or shortened, no pins were surgically inserted,

no tendons were cut, no muscles were peeled back to expose the bones

for surgery - there is nothing to heal, nothing to infect, and

nothing to malfunction. The entire foot can now grow and function

completely normally for the rest of that individual's life.

>

> No surgical theaters. No anesthesia. No pain killers. No

antibiotics. No hospital stays. No IV's. No starving the infant for

hours prior to the operation. No separation of the infant from his

parents. Reduced cost of treatment. Ninety-five percent success

rate. The promise of normal, natural feet. No ugly scars on the

outside of the skin, or crippling scar tissue growing on the inside.

Fifty years of use and follow up studies to back it.

>

> And still, no one wants to listen.

>

> And still, as the parents of children born with clubfoot, as

citizens in the most medically advanced nation on this earth, we find

surgical treatment of clubfoot not only barbaric, but irresponsible,

negligent to the extent of malpractice...and completely unacceptable.

>

> Why then will no body listen?

> Because we're talking about feet? Because there is no drama

to a non-surgical method? Ask the parents of children born with

clubfoot if their child's birth defect lacks drama.

>

> According to the March of Dimes:

> Neural Tube Defects (NTDs) affect 1 per 2,000 births.

> Down Syndrome ranks at 1 in 800 births.

> Sickle Cell Anemia affects from 1 in 500 to 1 in 1000 depending on

racial factors.

> Cleft Palate affects 1 in 1000.

> And Clubfoot is calculated to affect 1 in 735 births annually in

the United States, with higher rates abroad.

> It can be estimated by 2002 population figures that Clubfoot

affects approximately 4,000 to 5,000 American newborn babies each

year. More than Neural Tube Defects. More than Down Syndrome.

More than Cleft Palate. More or the same as Sickle Cell Anemia

> Even the March of Dimes remains unaware as their website suggests

as many as 50% of the infants born with Clubfoot will require a

surgical correction; that's forty-five percent more surgeries than

necessary. The Ponseti Method averages a low 5 percent surgical rate.

>

> But these are feet we're talking about, right? Who wants to pay

any attention to feet when there are much more exciting and dramatic

(although less prevalent) birth defects to talk about?

>

> Why talk about a non-surgical medical procedure when there are much

more colorful, gruesome, theatrical surgeries to broadcast? Blood

sells, right? Images of oxygen masks, heart monitors, teams of

doctors in their frocks hunched over a patient who is cut wide open?

Or a condition with no known cure? That's good television. Sick

children with no cure in sight. Twisted feet torturously dissected

is good television. A non-surgical method created by a Spanish Civil

War Veteran in 1948 who still practices at the age of 91 years old -

is also good television because behind the producer who has the guts

to broadcast this are 4,000 more babies being born this year who are

at risk of having their feet cut up unnecessarily - and you could

save them.

> We are here to nominate Doctor Ignacio Ponseti for the Lifetime

Achievement Award because he has truly given his life to these

crippled babies. His entire adult life, rapidly approaching a

century old, has been dedicated to achieving not personal goals for

his own fame and fortune because if that were the case, he and his

method would be world famous by now! But to achieving a happy life

minus the pain of deformed feet for thousands of babies world wide.

Abraham Lincoln said it best, " I can't think if my feet hurt. " If

ever a time in history demanded our future generations have clear

minds to think with, it is now.

>

> If awarded, Dr. Ponseti's wish is characteristically unselfish.

When asked, his only wish was that he be able to contribute more than

he already has, that his work be continued after he is gone though

the veins of his foundation: The Clubfoot Clinic Fund.

>

> This foundation supports research of clubfoot so perhaps the one in

a thousand babies currently born in the US each year with this birth

defect can be diminished if not eliminated completely (scientists

believe they have recently isolated the gene that causes clubfoot);

it supports the continued development of better treatment options

such as better casting materials and better designs of the Foot

Abduction Brace; it helps pay for treatments that otherwise could not

be afforded by economically challenged parents; it sends supplies and

braces to the poor and under-developed countries around the world; it

supports bringing in doctors from both America and over seas to train

with Dr. Ponseti and his colleagues in Iowa so they may take the

method home and continue its use; it funds the development of

clubfoot clinics in 3rd world countries where the rate of clubfoot

per capita is much higher than it is here in the US.

>

> Granted his wish, the sky would be the limit. More doctors could

afford to train under Dr. Ponseti; an educated medical community

could identify and eliminate from practice those who are performing

the method falsely; teleconferencing technology could be put in place

so doctors world wide could consult with one another directly,

sharing video images, photos, x-rays, advice, help and ultimately,

success. Public awareness in the general population could be raised

so eventually no child will have to suffer the consequences of

treatment that became outdated three years after their great-

grandparents came home from WWII - because through public awareness,

those methods would become as happily obsolete as Art Mooney's 1948

top ten song.

>

> Additionally, although Dr. Ponseti did not request this, we would

like to organize a reunion of his patients, both those who have been

treated by his gentle hands in person, and those who were treated by

his method thanks to the few doctors who have taken the time to learn

it. We would like to publicly honor the man who gave our children

back their feet.

>

> We nominate Dr. Ponseti not as a small group of mothers who meet at

the coffee shop with too much time on our hands - but as hundreds, if

not thousands of mothers, and fathers, and grandparents, aunts and

uncles and children young and old who have experienced clubfoot first

hand, who have educated themselves, their friends and their

neighbors, who have continued for years now the daunting task of

speaking loudly that the world might finally listen and finally

eliminate the primitive treatments still in use today on our young

babies.

>

> We nominate Dr. Ponseti on behalf of the 45,000 (yes, forty-five

thousand) babies who will be born in the U.S. over the next ten

years who will suffer this birth defect.

>

> It's been close to sixty years. It's time this great American

story is told to the world. It is time the world knew medical

science has escaped the 1940's and moved in to the twenty-first

century.

>

> He was an immigrant escaping the Spanish Civil War arriving in

America the year we entered World War II. Now he is a 91 year old

doctor who still walks to work each day to treat his tiniest of

patients, because if not Dr. Ponseti, then who? The world must

learn and new young doctors must move in to fill the shoes, to

advance the method, to save the babies.

>

> We, the parents of children born with clubfoot implore you to

explore the rich and colorful life of this silent American icon so he

will not only get the recognition he deserves after half a century of

service, but also so no other baby will have to endure the horrors of

having their feet taken apart and put artificially back together

unnecessarily.

>

> If nothing else happens from our attempt to honor Dr. Ponseti with

the Lifetime Achievement Award, one very key thing has happened

right before your very eyes: you, the reader, are now informed.

>

> We the parents of children born with clubfoot have reached one more

person, who will, some day, tell two friends who will, someday, tell

two friends. And thus, the Ponseti Method has survived for half a

century one person at a time - and truly, that is probably the only

reward Dr. Ponseti would ever ask for, that the word be spread, even

if by only one mouth and one ear at a time. He doesn't want awards,

he wants to see an end to the senseless brutality our trusted doctors

are inflicting upon our tiniest of babies. Once that is

accomplished, then, maybe then, he will finally feel it is safe for

him to retire and pass his torch to the next generation trusting we

will keep it burning.

>

>

>

>

>

> Summary and Contact Information:

>

> There are two forms of clubfeet. The first is relatively minor

and known as Positional Clubfoot often due to a lack of amniotic

fluid in the uterus cramping the baby's development. The second is

Congenital Clubfeet, it is considered idiopathic, meaning doctors are

not entirely sure what causes it , but suspect it caused by an

unknown genetic factor coming in to play affecting the baby at

approximately 20 weeks post conception. There also appears to be a

slight inheritance factor involved as well, although not always.

Because clubfoot is not present in the early weeks of development

when most ultrasounds are performed, the condition is often not

discovered until the child's birth.

> The Ponseti Method of Clubfoot correction is superior to the

traditional method of treatment in that the baby's bones are gently

persuaded to move in to their natural position through a process of

systematic serial castings. No surgeries take place. No bones are

cut, broken, or pinned back together. No muscles or tendons are

stripped. No joints are penetrated. The method is completely non-

intrusive. Done correctly the foot is allowed to continue its

natural progression in to adulthood allowing these child to live

normal, active lives.

> With correction performed properly by a qualified physician and

with the parent's diligent and dedicated use of the FAB (Foot

Abduction Brace), babies treated by the Ponseti Method enjoy a 95%

success rate, i.e., 95% of the babies will never need a surgical

attempt at correction.

>

> For more information about the clubfoot deformity, please contact

the University of Iowa Clubfoot Clinic at (319)356-3469 or visit

http://www.vh.org/pediatric/patient/orthopaedics/clubfeet/index.html

for medical reports, articles, FAQ's, testimonials and photos.

Parents or family members of a clubfooted baby are urged to join the

nosurgery4clubfoot group at Yahoo! groups,

nosurgery4clubfoot for advice and support.

>

>

>

> This Nomination is sent to you by the Parents of Children Born With

Clubfoot and the children born with clubfoot who became the victims

of misinformed doctors, as well as the children who have most

blessedly been cured by the life's work of Dr. Ignacio Ponseti -

and all the clubfooted babies yet to come.

>

> Signed and Sincerely,

>

> ee and Chriss Reese of Oklahoma

> - parents of two clubfooted sons, who remains somewhat

crippled because we did not know yet about Dr. Ponseti, and Everett

who enjoys perfect feet thanks to Dr. Ponseti.

> Harvey and June Reese of Oklahoma

> - parents of one clubfooted child, Mark, who remains with crippled

feet because no one knew about the Ponseti Method.

> Leroy Reese of Oklahoma

> - father of one clubfooted son, Greg, who remains with crippled

feet because no one knew about the Ponseti Method.

>

> Others add your names like this too and grow the list

>

>

>

>

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Thanks everybody - I'm going to leave this to 's disgression, she's the

one heading this up (at least I thought so!). You all do what you want with

it, like I said before.

s.

Re: 's Dr. Ponseti Essay REVISED.doc

ee, this is great!

I'd love to add my family's names to this as well.

and Houdek of Minneapolis, MN, - Parents of one

clubfooted son, Aleksander, with two beautiful feet thanks to the

Ponseti Method.

> , and Everyone,

> here is the email version for the Life Time Achievement Award

Essay - (I'll send an attachment version also for easier printing

and/or editing if you choose). I hope this is somewhere with in a

hundred miles of what you were anticipating. I asked Joyce Roller

for more specifics but have not heard from her, so I went with what I

had and am sending it before you think I'm blowing off my assignment

here. Actually, ask my husband, I've lost a lot of sleep, such a

responsibility, such an important undertaking!

>

> If it sucks I'm not offended if you scratch it out and start from

scratch. Woven throughout you will notice I used your key points.

Likewise, if there is any mis-information that needs corrected by all

means bring it to my attention, or if anyone has information prudent

to the cause that I totally over looked, that too should be brought

forth! Because there was not a page limit / word limit, I did not

limit myself or even attempt to. It's double spaced and justified

for easier reading. Nor did I bring a case history of any

particular patient in to it, aiming to be objective and factual, yet

tell the story in such a way as to convey the man's compassion and

the legitimacy of this birth defect. I told it from the standpoint

of " We the parents of children born with clubfoot " ....I do not mean

to exclude those here who are now adults who were born with clubfoot,

but the objective is to spread the word that new born babies will not

endure the tortures of misinformed doctors using out dated treatments.

>

> And with all that as my disclaimer, sitting here insecurely as I

toss out my wares for inspection, here is the actual essay as it sits

on my desk tonight.

> Blessings to all,

> ee

>

>

>

> Dr. Ignacio Ponseti Lifetime Achievement Award Essay

>

> by: ee Reese

> September 2005

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

> Five years after the Spanish military initiated an uprising against

their own Republican government sparking years of Civil War, lin

D. Roosevelt made his historic 3rd Inaugural Address to the Nation,

Pearl Harbor was obliterated, the famous Infamy Speech was delivered,

and the United States, having already suffered twelve years of

economic collapse on the heels of fighting World War I, entered World

War II.

>

> The year was 1941.

> It was the year a young man immigrated to America from Spain to

escape the post civil war ravages in his homeland.

>

> Historians suggest the Spanish Civil War which ejected this young

doctor on to American shores was merely a prelude to the World War

that he traveled across the Atlantic Ocean in effort to escape. They

further suggest the Spanish war was a testing ground, implying the

bombing of Guernica promoted advances in twentieth-century warfare

techniques and technology.

>

> Fortunately, this era brought forth amazing advances in medical

technique and technology as well - which also came from Spain.

>

> His name was Ignacio Ponseti. He came to America an immigrant, a

young doctor escaping a war torn country to enter a country that was

engaging into a war of epic proportions that very same year. It was

a small world after all.

>

> Ultimately he arrived at the University of Iowa College of Medicine

where his assignment was to perform certain follow up studies on

patients who had been treated for clubfoot according to the " modern "

medical standards of that time. Disappointed with his findings, the

young doctor dedicated his life to finding a better way to cure this

crippling birth defect.

> Only seven years after his arrival to the United States, post war

America was a very different place. Luxury automobile owners were

sporting the newly invented electric car windows. Art Mooney was

topping the charts with his hit song I'm Looking Over A Four Leaf

Clover; and fittingly with this new-found era of American

prosperity, our young Dr. Ponseti achieved his goal. In 1948,

through his years of dedicated hands on treatment and research, he

discovered, then refined, his non-surgical method for correcting

clubfoot.

>

> The glory of his work is that children no longer have to undergo

painful surgeries that most often result in a life time of painful

feet and subsequent surgeries.

> The horror is that fifty-seven years after developing his method,

the medical community at large continues to practice according to the

same techniques they used half a century ago when he started,

ignoring the Ponseti Method despite his decades of follow up studies

proving its 95% effectiveness rate when performed properly.

>

> In 1941 he was a Spanish Immigrant. Today, he is Professor

Emeritus Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Iowa College of

Medicine. The doctor, and his method, remain one of the world's

best kept secrets as the medical community continually refuses to

adopt or even recognize the validity of his method.

>

> As the parents of children born with this vulgar, crippling,

congenital birth defect, we consider this unacceptable.

>

> When he was 70 years old the University of Iowa, where he still

practiced, forced Dr. Ponseti to retire. Two years later, he

convinced the University to take him back despite his 'advanced'

age. He continued to perform his miracle on otherwise crippled

babies for the next fourteen years.

>

> When he was 84, he once again headed in to retirement - then the

internet happened. Word of his non-surgical method began to

spread. As parents discovered they had a choice, they began to

travel from across the USA and from across the ocean seeking out his

method for their children. Today, twenty years after the University

tried to force him to quit, parents are still traveling to see him,

or one of his few qualified associates. And finally, after fifty

odd years of dedicated service, the University of Iowa Hospital

finally recognized Dr. Ponseti's contribution to both their facility

and the medical field by naming a branch of their clinic after the

man who has given his life to giving children happy feet.

> Word continues to spread by mouth and internet about this

astonishing, dedicated man and his incredible journey that started

half a world away a half a century ago, but as the parents of

children born with clubfoot we face two major obstacles.

> First, to be completely candid, time is ticking. Dr. Ponseti

will celebrate his 91st birthday in June of this year (2005) yet he

continues to serve parents and babies in his clinic at the University

of Iowa - the oldest of hands gently repairing the youngest of

patients.

> " Do not cry, Baby. " The gentle, quiet words roll off his tongue in

a thick Spanish accent that immediately begins to sooth the anxious

child with their music. " If you cry, then I will cry, and then my

nurse will cry and then your Ma'Ma will cry. We will all be crying!

Do not cry, Baby. " and turning to the mother, " Here Ma'Ma, take your

baby, comfort him, I will not work on a crying baby, let him calm

down. " He points to the old rocking chair where he so often sits to

do his exams. The mother rocks her baby. The room smiles. The

mother, the father, the nurses, the students, and Dr. Ponseti, the

90 year old doctor pauses in his work for as long as it takes as if

this infant is the only infant in the world and time has stood still

for it.

>

> He continues to teach any doctor willing to learn; he consults

daily via email and telephone not only with other doctors, but

personally answering the calls of distraught parents and sorting

through the photos and videos parents send showing their baby's feet

at various stages of various treatments. He turns no one away.

> " You must come right away. " He is on the phone answering the

email plea sent with digital photos of a 19 month old boy with

deformed feet despite a year and a half of treatments and physical

therapy. " I can help " , says the doctor, " but there is no time to be

lost, you must come right away. You get here and I will see you. "

> Because of the previous nineteen months of substandard treatment

this child will never be completely corrected nor ever know what it

means to have pain-free feet despite Dr. Ponseti's best efforts. But

though his efforts, another believer is born, who spreads the word of

his miracles so no other child has to endure what her son must endure.

> Slowly, through the efforts of parents like us spreading the word

and insisting we have alternatives to surgery, the list of qualified

Ponseti Method physicians is growing annually. But time is ticking

and the method is at risk of being lost forever.

>

> The second obstacle we face is the medical world, sadly enough.

Through the internet the term Ponseti Method has gained popularity,

even if the actual method has not. Suddenly the clinics are flooded

with cheap imitations throwing around the words " Ponseti Method "

although they are not practicing the Ponseti Method in any true form.

These doctors are not skilled in the method, they have received no

formal training, and unfortunately, most parents don't know the

difference until it is too late, until they can no longer deny their

child is not getting any better and may in fact, be getting worse.

So they finally do their own research. They finally make that call,

and Dr. Ponseti says to come right away, because he always says come

right away, because he always holds out hope to the very end.

Because every baby becomes his baby.

> But these children do not always arrive in time to be rescued from

their horrible fate, because while clubfoot is nearly 100%

correctable, there is a limited window of opportunity that allows the

miracle to take place. Once the window is closed, the basic human

anatomy of the foot no longer lets a non-surgical correction happen.

And if the baby arrives to Ponseti's care too late, that baby will

forever suffer the consequences of inadequate care.

> With so many unqualified doctors suddenly claiming to use the

Ponseti Method, yet doing something quite different, the results are

predictably disastrous. Thus we risk that the method will be

eventually proven ineffective as these results are published and the

public and medical communities combined rally against the Ponseti

Method for it's ineffectiveness with out realizing this lack of

success is not due to the method not working, but due to gross and

incompetent misuse of the method by untrained physicians.

>

> And when the that happens, the method will be lost forever. There

are already claims that Ponseti's method is only perhaps 70, 60 or

50% effective - when in fact, qualified doctors who use the method

according to the protocol are consistently achieving 95% success

rates year after year after year.

>

> And again we say, as the parents of babies born with this ugly,

crippling birth defect, this is completely unacceptable.

>

> So how do we know? How is a parent who has just been dealt the

crushing news their baby has a major birth defect supposed to know

the difference when any doctor who has heard of clubfeet is suddenly

proclaiming to be advanced in the method of treating either though

Ponseti's method or more traditional modes? When a baby is born with

a birth defect, and one as physically ugly as clubfoot often is, a

parent is eager to relieve their own sense of guilt and their

child's suffering. They often are so eager they blindly trust the

local doctor - after all, he's a doctor, he should know. And when we

ask, when we finally get around to noticing something is wrong and we

ask, we are riddled with long technical answers that leave us feeling

inferior and confused and ashamed of ourselves for questioning his

superiority. So how do we know what to do?

>

> Through public awareness like this, for starters.

>

> In traditional treatments, the infant is often put through months

of serial casting where their foot is manually wrenched in to a

normal looking position and casted in to that shape as it grows. As

recent as the 1960's, Dr. Dennis Brown writes that he used mechanical

devices to wrench the foot in to position prior to casting. Somehow,

the Foot Abduction Brace (FAB) which is used in the Ponseti Method

became known popularly as the Dennis Brown Bar, or DBB. (We call it

the FAB, wanting no association between Dr. Ponseti's gentle care and

the horrific mechanical tortures used by Dr. Brown.)

> At the end of all this the child almost always undergoes corrective

surgery anyway because the bones remain misaligned. The surgery

involves taking the foot apart and reassembling it to look normal on

the outside even though it has been grossly disassembled and remains

deformed on the inside. The result is the bones are not allowed to

grow naturally as they should; scar tissue builds up; joints stiffen;

tendons are unable to stretch; more surgeries become necessary to

loosen a tendon, to scrape out scar tissue, to add steel pins or

remove steel pins. And still the foot remains misshapen and painful

to use, often not fitting in any type of regular shoe.

> The only thing the Ponseti Method has in common with the

traditional method of treatment is the term Serial Casting, which

implies a series of casts are applied to the child. In the 1940's

Dr. Ponseti discovered what all the others had overlooked - the

delicate infrastructure of the foot and the logical, sequential

placement of it's twenty-six bones. The bones in a clubbed foot are

all there, they're really OK, but like a jigsaw puzzle, they come

mixed up in the box and need put back together to make the final

picture. Traditional methods of correction do not account for this.

Traditional thinking seems to believe the bones are wrong, that the

bones need fixed. But they aren't wrong, and they don't need fixed,

they just need gentle hands and careful eyes placing them in the

correct spot like the intricate puzzle they are - not sawed upon to

fit where a doctor wants them or crammed in to positions where they

were not intended by nature to fit.

>

> Treated properly by the Ponseti Method, the tiny new born bones are

very gently, slowly and methodically manipulated by gentle hands in

to their proper alignment where they are expertly casted in to place

for a period of five to seven days. Again and again the process is

repeated over the course of approximately five weeks - each bone

individually identified, placed in its necessary position according

to a certain sequence of movements, and casted in to place,

maintained for approximately a week as the foot adapts.

> Most infants sleep through the process as the doctor finds the

correct bones and moves them carefully, and always sequentially, in

to their proper position (compared to the physical restraint babies

require using other methods). Others eat or play. And almost none

cry, because it is neither frightening nor painful. No drugs are

given, no shots, no restraints, the parents are always present,

holding or other wise comforting the baby, and if fear does creep in

and cause the child anxiety, the process is stopped until the baby is

again feeling calm and secure because an anxious child will be tense,

and tense bones and muscles cannot be properly aligned anyway. So

the whole Ponseti Method rests largely on maintaining a calm, happy

baby though the correction process. The entire visit is usually over

with in less than a half an hour.

>

> While we don't want Ponseti's method mixed up with any new-age

mentality that it ranks with acupuncture, herbs, aroma therapy or the

beating of drums during the twelfth hour of the full moon as Venus

enters the shadow of Mars - neither does this method belong to the

ranks of sterile surgical rooms, recovery rooms, antibiotics,

stitches, face masks, needles, tubes or electronic monitoring

devices.

> Completely scientific, completely proven, completely safe and

effective, the Ponseti Method is a very gentle and organic procedure

saving children from their crippling condition.

> The average infant born with clubfoot has corrected, fully

functional feet with in five to seven weeks of serial casting when

the casting is performed in this manner. In other words, this child

treated correctly by the Ponseti Method will have normal feet before

he is ever old enough to realize they were missing in the first place.

>

> When the manipulation of the bones is complete, the infant is

moved out of casting and in to the Foot Abduction Brace (FAB) - a

small pair of baby booties connected by a bar that runs between

them. Set at very specific degrees and measurements to match each

individual infant, the baby wears this brace for 23 hours a day for

the first three months of use. From there the amount of time the

baby wears the brace is gradually reduced to approximately twelve to

fourteen hours of wear - bed time - as the bones grow and experience

their natural hardening process. Unlike the unfortunate children

who might wear the casts for six to twelve months in the traditional

methods, babies who wear the FAB are not delayed in development.

They can roll over, crawl, and eventually cruise with the FAB on

their feet meeting every milestone on time. They still fit in to

normal cloths, cribs, high chairs and car seats with the FAB on their

feet, it becomes only a small extension of the child, for a small

part of their life.

>

> By the end of the treatment period, the feet have grown, the bones

have hardened as they do, and the correction is now maintained simply

by the natural growth and exercise of the foot. Because no bones

were cut, lengthened or shortened, no pins were surgically inserted,

no tendons were cut, no muscles were peeled back to expose the bones

for surgery - there is nothing to heal, nothing to infect, and

nothing to malfunction. The entire foot can now grow and function

completely normally for the rest of that individual's life.

>

> No surgical theaters. No anesthesia. No pain killers. No

antibiotics. No hospital stays. No IV's. No starving the infant for

hours prior to the operation. No separation of the infant from his

parents. Reduced cost of treatment. Ninety-five percent success

rate. The promise of normal, natural feet. No ugly scars on the

outside of the skin, or crippling scar tissue growing on the inside.

Fifty years of use and follow up studies to back it.

>

> And still, no one wants to listen.

>

> And still, as the parents of children born with clubfoot, as

citizens in the most medically advanced nation on this earth, we find

surgical treatment of clubfoot not only barbaric, but irresponsible,

negligent to the extent of malpractice...and completely unacceptable.

>

> Why then will no body listen?

> Because we're talking about feet? Because there is no drama

to a non-surgical method? Ask the parents of children born with

clubfoot if their child's birth defect lacks drama.

>

> According to the March of Dimes:

> Neural Tube Defects (NTDs) affect 1 per 2,000 births.

> Down Syndrome ranks at 1 in 800 births.

> Sickle Cell Anemia affects from 1 in 500 to 1 in 1000 depending on

racial factors.

> Cleft Palate affects 1 in 1000.

> And Clubfoot is calculated to affect 1 in 735 births annually in

the United States, with higher rates abroad.

> It can be estimated by 2002 population figures that Clubfoot

affects approximately 4,000 to 5,000 American newborn babies each

year. More than Neural Tube Defects. More than Down Syndrome.

More than Cleft Palate. More or the same as Sickle Cell Anemia

> Even the March of Dimes remains unaware as their website suggests

as many as 50% of the infants born with Clubfoot will require a

surgical correction; that's forty-five percent more surgeries than

necessary. The Ponseti Method averages a low 5 percent surgical rate.

>

> But these are feet we're talking about, right? Who wants to pay

any attention to feet when there are much more exciting and dramatic

(although less prevalent) birth defects to talk about?

>

> Why talk about a non-surgical medical procedure when there are much

more colorful, gruesome, theatrical surgeries to broadcast? Blood

sells, right? Images of oxygen masks, heart monitors, teams of

doctors in their frocks hunched over a patient who is cut wide open?

Or a condition with no known cure? That's good television. Sick

children with no cure in sight. Twisted feet torturously dissected

is good television. A non-surgical method created by a Spanish Civil

War Veteran in 1948 who still practices at the age of 91 years old -

is also good television because behind the producer who has the guts

to broadcast this are 4,000 more babies being born this year who are

at risk of having their feet cut up unnecessarily - and you could

save them.

> We are here to nominate Doctor Ignacio Ponseti for the Lifetime

Achievement Award because he has truly given his life to these

crippled babies. His entire adult life, rapidly approaching a

century old, has been dedicated to achieving not personal goals for

his own fame and fortune because if that were the case, he and his

method would be world famous by now! But to achieving a happy life

minus the pain of deformed feet for thousands of babies world wide.

Abraham Lincoln said it best, " I can't think if my feet hurt. " If

ever a time in history demanded our future generations have clear

minds to think with, it is now.

>

> If awarded, Dr. Ponseti's wish is characteristically unselfish.

When asked, his only wish was that he be able to contribute more than

he already has, that his work be continued after he is gone though

the veins of his foundation: The Clubfoot Clinic Fund.

>

> This foundation supports research of clubfoot so perhaps the one in

a thousand babies currently born in the US each year with this birth

defect can be diminished if not eliminated completely (scientists

believe they have recently isolated the gene that causes clubfoot);

it supports the continued development of better treatment options

such as better casting materials and better designs of the Foot

Abduction Brace; it helps pay for treatments that otherwise could not

be afforded by economically challenged parents; it sends supplies and

braces to the poor and under-developed countries around the world; it

supports bringing in doctors from both America and over seas to train

with Dr. Ponseti and his colleagues in Iowa so they may take the

method home and continue its use; it funds the development of

clubfoot clinics in 3rd world countries where the rate of clubfoot

per capita is much higher than it is here in the US.

>

> Granted his wish, the sky would be the limit. More doctors could

afford to train under Dr. Ponseti; an educated medical community

could identify and eliminate from practice those who are performing

the method falsely; teleconferencing technology could be put in place

so doctors world wide could consult with one another directly,

sharing video images, photos, x-rays, advice, help and ultimately,

success. Public awareness in the general population could be raised

so eventually no child will have to suffer the consequences of

treatment that became outdated three years after their great-

grandparents came home from WWII - because through public awareness,

those methods would become as happily obsolete as Art Mooney's 1948

top ten song.

>

> Additionally, although Dr. Ponseti did not request this, we would

like to organize a reunion of his patients, both those who have been

treated by his gentle hands in person, and those who were treated by

his method thanks to the few doctors who have taken the time to learn

it. We would like to publicly honor the man who gave our children

back their feet.

>

> We nominate Dr. Ponseti not as a small group of mothers who meet at

the coffee shop with too much time on our hands - but as hundreds, if

not thousands of mothers, and fathers, and grandparents, aunts and

uncles and children young and old who have experienced clubfoot first

hand, who have educated themselves, their friends and their

neighbors, who have continued for years now the daunting task of

speaking loudly that the world might finally listen and finally

eliminate the primitive treatments still in use today on our young

babies.

>

> We nominate Dr. Ponseti on behalf of the 45,000 (yes, forty-five

thousand) babies who will be born in the U.S. over the next ten

years who will suffer this birth defect.

>

> It's been close to sixty years. It's time this great American

story is told to the world. It is time the world knew medical

science has escaped the 1940's and moved in to the twenty-first

century.

>

> He was an immigrant escaping the Spanish Civil War arriving in

America the year we entered World War II. Now he is a 91 year old

doctor who still walks to work each day to treat his tiniest of

patients, because if not Dr. Ponseti, then who? The world must

learn and new young doctors must move in to fill the shoes, to

advance the method, to save the babies.

>

> We, the parents of children born with clubfoot implore you to

explore the rich and colorful life of this silent American icon so he

will not only get the recognition he deserves after half a century of

service, but also so no other baby will have to endure the horrors of

having their feet taken apart and put artificially back together

unnecessarily.

>

> If nothing else happens from our attempt to honor Dr. Ponseti with

the Lifetime Achievement Award, one very key thing has happened

right before your very eyes: you, the reader, are now informed.

>

> We the parents of children born with clubfoot have reached one more

person, who will, some day, tell two friends who will, someday, tell

two friends. And thus, the Ponseti Method has survived for half a

century one person at a time - and truly, that is probably the only

reward Dr. Ponseti would ever ask for, that the word be spread, even

if by only one mouth and one ear at a time. He doesn't want awards,

he wants to see an end to the senseless brutality our trusted doctors

are inflicting upon our tiniest of babies. Once that is

accomplished, then, maybe then, he will finally feel it is safe for

him to retire and pass his torch to the next generation trusting we

will keep it burning.

>

>

>

>

>

> Summary and Contact Information:

>

> There are two forms of clubfeet. The first is relatively minor

and known as Positional Clubfoot often due to a lack of amniotic

fluid in the uterus cramping the baby's development. The second is

Congenital Clubfeet, it is considered idiopathic, meaning doctors are

not entirely sure what causes it , but suspect it caused by an

unknown genetic factor coming in to play affecting the baby at

approximately 20 weeks post conception. There also appears to be a

slight inheritance factor involved as well, although not always.

Because clubfoot is not present in the early weeks of development

when most ultrasounds are performed, the condition is often not

discovered until the child's birth.

> The Ponseti Method of Clubfoot correction is superior to the

traditional method of treatment in that the baby's bones are gently

persuaded to move in to their natural position through a process of

systematic serial castings. No surgeries take place. No bones are

cut, broken, or pinned back together. No muscles or tendons are

stripped. No joints are penetrated. The method is completely non-

intrusive. Done correctly the foot is allowed to continue its

natural progression in to adulthood allowing these child to live

normal, active lives.

> With correction performed properly by a qualified physician and

with the parent's diligent and dedicated use of the FAB (Foot

Abduction Brace), babies treated by the Ponseti Method enjoy a 95%

success rate, i.e., 95% of the babies will never need a surgical

attempt at correction.

>

> For more information about the clubfoot deformity, please contact

the University of Iowa Clubfoot Clinic at (319)356-3469 or visit

http://www.vh.org/pediatric/patient/orthopaedics/clubfeet/index.html

for medical reports, articles, FAQ's, testimonials and photos.

Parents or family members of a clubfooted baby are urged to join the

nosurgery4clubfoot group at Yahoo! groups,

nosurgery4clubfoot for advice and support.

>

>

>

> This Nomination is sent to you by the Parents of Children Born With

Clubfoot and the children born with clubfoot who became the victims

of misinformed doctors, as well as the children who have most

blessedly been cured by the life's work of Dr. Ignacio Ponseti -

and all the clubfooted babies yet to come.

>

> Signed and Sincerely,

>

> ee and Chriss Reese of Oklahoma

> - parents of two clubfooted sons, who remains somewhat

crippled because we did not know yet about Dr. Ponseti, and Everett

who enjoys perfect feet thanks to Dr. Ponseti.

> Harvey and June Reese of Oklahoma

> - parents of one clubfooted child, Mark, who remains with crippled

feet because no one knew about the Ponseti Method.

> Leroy Reese of Oklahoma

> - father of one clubfooted son, Greg, who remains with crippled

feet because no one knew about the Ponseti Method.

>

> Others add your names like this too and grow the list

>

>

>

>

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Thanks - not everyone agrees, and that is totally OK with me, I'm not the

least bit offended. I just want him chosen, and who ever can do that has my

blessing.

s.

Re: 's Dr. Ponseti Essay REVISED.doc

ee,

That is absolutely amazing, well said and thought out. It was very sweet

of you to take the time to write such a touching letter. There is no way,

someone could read that letter and turn their heads (unless they are not

human).

Let's keep our fingers crossed from here.

Please add......

and Shook,

Parents to , who has successfully been treated with the Ponseti

Method, after restarting her treatment at 5 months with a qualified

Ponseti method physician, thus saving her from unnecessary surgery.

Shook

Retail Operations Manager/Baking Instructor

Vie de France Yamazaki, Inc.

2070 Chain Bridge Rd. Suite 500

Vienna, VA 22182

x374

x374

fax

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Thanks - not everyone agrees, and that is totally OK with me, I'm not the

least bit offended. I just want him chosen, and who ever can do that has my

blessing.

s.

Re: 's Dr. Ponseti Essay REVISED.doc

ee,

That is absolutely amazing, well said and thought out. It was very sweet

of you to take the time to write such a touching letter. There is no way,

someone could read that letter and turn their heads (unless they are not

human).

Let's keep our fingers crossed from here.

Please add......

and Shook,

Parents to , who has successfully been treated with the Ponseti

Method, after restarting her treatment at 5 months with a qualified

Ponseti method physician, thus saving her from unnecessary surgery.

Shook

Retail Operations Manager/Baking Instructor

Vie de France Yamazaki, Inc.

2070 Chain Bridge Rd. Suite 500

Vienna, VA 22182

x374

x374

fax

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Then of course the wording there needs corrected to be more specific, I just had

(whatever I wrote down) in front of me.

s.

-----

any donation would need to be sent to the University of Iowa Foundation:

Clubfoot Clinic fund. He was pretty specific about this when I spoke to him.

Faith, Mother to , Bilateral, Atypical Clubfoot, born 21 Apr 04, treated

by Ponseti

ee, you did a fantastic job of writing an inspiring essay.

Thanks for your hard work. I have not visited this site in several

months, but I am glad I read the postings today!

I would love to have my name added to nominate Dr. Ponseti for a

Lifetime Achievement Award. He began treating my daughter's LCF after

4 futile months of visiting a local Chicago doctor who " used the

Ponseti Method " . I am so proud to have her walking today at 16 months

of age!

Mollie Vanderkarr

Mother of , born 4/04 with a LCF and treated by Dr. Ponseti.

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Then of course the wording there needs corrected to be more specific, I just had

(whatever I wrote down) in front of me.

s.

-----

any donation would need to be sent to the University of Iowa Foundation:

Clubfoot Clinic fund. He was pretty specific about this when I spoke to him.

Faith, Mother to , Bilateral, Atypical Clubfoot, born 21 Apr 04, treated

by Ponseti

ee, you did a fantastic job of writing an inspiring essay.

Thanks for your hard work. I have not visited this site in several

months, but I am glad I read the postings today!

I would love to have my name added to nominate Dr. Ponseti for a

Lifetime Achievement Award. He began treating my daughter's LCF after

4 futile months of visiting a local Chicago doctor who " used the

Ponseti Method " . I am so proud to have her walking today at 16 months

of age!

Mollie Vanderkarr

Mother of , born 4/04 with a LCF and treated by Dr. Ponseti.

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Constructive criticism? And just who the heck are you??? I'M JOKING! Very

good points made - but I've been gone a few days scanning through nearly 200

messages right now and not sure where it's all sitting at the moment.

s.

's Dr. Ponseti Essay REVISED.doc

ee, Your essay is awesome. It captures Dr.

Ponseti so well especially the part about him calming

the babies and what happens in the cast room. That's

exactly what he said to Alaya. I just have a few

suggestions if you are ok with constructive critism.

Please don't take it personally because I couldn't

have done half as good as you did. You paint a

wonderful picture and it's great to know the history.

That being said here are some minor suggestions. I'm

not sure the part about Dr. Brown is good, we don't

want to bash all the other doctors just honor Dr.

Ponseti.

Also I think it's important to say that the method is

very easy to learn and only requires a two day

training course. In fact Cast techs in Uganda, South

Africa and other developing countries also have a 95%

success rate simply because they follow the method.

It's not complicated. The jigsaw puzzle isn't

complicated it's not a 1,000 piece puzzle, only a 26

piece puzzle. It's very simple, but other doctors

think they know best.

Finally, I'm not sure about the length. It holds my

attention because I'm personally involved, but do

producers what a short to the point nomination. Anyone

have experience in TV?

Is this for the Three wishes show or is there another

life time aceivement award?

Thanks so much for your time and research and your

wonderful presentation for the man we all love.

Please add our names.

Tony and Joanne Fuller, Findlay Ohio, parents to Alaya

age 4, born with severe bilateral clubfeet, now with

perfect feet. Treated by Dr. Ponseti in Iowa

beginning at five days old with four casts. Corrected

by 7 weeks of age.

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Constructive criticism? And just who the heck are you??? I'M JOKING! Very

good points made - but I've been gone a few days scanning through nearly 200

messages right now and not sure where it's all sitting at the moment.

s.

's Dr. Ponseti Essay REVISED.doc

ee, Your essay is awesome. It captures Dr.

Ponseti so well especially the part about him calming

the babies and what happens in the cast room. That's

exactly what he said to Alaya. I just have a few

suggestions if you are ok with constructive critism.

Please don't take it personally because I couldn't

have done half as good as you did. You paint a

wonderful picture and it's great to know the history.

That being said here are some minor suggestions. I'm

not sure the part about Dr. Brown is good, we don't

want to bash all the other doctors just honor Dr.

Ponseti.

Also I think it's important to say that the method is

very easy to learn and only requires a two day

training course. In fact Cast techs in Uganda, South

Africa and other developing countries also have a 95%

success rate simply because they follow the method.

It's not complicated. The jigsaw puzzle isn't

complicated it's not a 1,000 piece puzzle, only a 26

piece puzzle. It's very simple, but other doctors

think they know best.

Finally, I'm not sure about the length. It holds my

attention because I'm personally involved, but do

producers what a short to the point nomination. Anyone

have experience in TV?

Is this for the Three wishes show or is there another

life time aceivement award?

Thanks so much for your time and research and your

wonderful presentation for the man we all love.

Please add our names.

Tony and Joanne Fuller, Findlay Ohio, parents to Alaya

age 4, born with severe bilateral clubfeet, now with

perfect feet. Treated by Dr. Ponseti in Iowa

beginning at five days old with four casts. Corrected

by 7 weeks of age.

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lol!

I noticed a few typos, but the content of the letter is perfect.

Please add our names to the letter.

and Jeff Steinert of Maine.

-parents of -Steinert born with bilateral clubfoot, who

was treated unsuccessfully by an orthopedic surgeon for nine months

before finding Dr. Mack at Shriner's Hospital in Springfield, MA. Dr.

Mack saved from unnecessary surgery and gave him perfect feet

using the Ponseti method.

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lol!

I noticed a few typos, but the content of the letter is perfect.

Please add our names to the letter.

and Jeff Steinert of Maine.

-parents of -Steinert born with bilateral clubfoot, who

was treated unsuccessfully by an orthopedic surgeon for nine months

before finding Dr. Mack at Shriner's Hospital in Springfield, MA. Dr.

Mack saved from unnecessary surgery and gave him perfect feet

using the Ponseti method.

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So we share the same story - one child treated wrong, another child treated

right. :(

s.

Re: Re: 's Dr. Ponseti Essay REVISED.doc

I just read the essay and am sitting hear in tears, it is the best thing I have

ever read! I pray that someone out there finally listens and the word is spread.

I just returned last month from Iowa were my 14 year old daughter had surgery to

correct her " corrected " clubfeet (we didn't know this method existed when she

was born and she had 3 surgeries. Our youngest is just 4 months old and has been

lovingly and wonderfuly corrected by Dr. Ponseti, the greatest man on earth!

Please add our name! Also this may seem weird but has anyone thought of maybe

handing this esssay or something like it to Couric (sp?) when she is

outside doing the Today show in Manhattan? She is a mother and very pro being

informed when it comes to medical issues (I don't think she just limits it to

cancer issues). She is very powerful in todays news show arena, it might be

worth a try....

Moshe and Leah parents of

sha (3/3/90) very stiff and painful feet, due to surgeries to " correct "

bilateral clubfeet, Eli (4/24/05) unilateral clubfoot. Happy little boy with

fantastic feet corrected by Dr.Ponseti and 7 other children who all tell their

friends about a wonderful doctor in Iowa that fixed their brother and made their

parents smile again!

wrote:

ee--That was absolutely the most beautiful thing I've ever read.

You brought tears to my eyes. I'm crying like a baby, actually.

Please add our names also.

& Kline, from Pennsylvania, parents of Ava Kline, born

8/4/04 with a right club foot, now a beautiful straight foot thanks to

the Ponseti Method

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So we share the same story - one child treated wrong, another child treated

right. :(

s.

Re: Re: 's Dr. Ponseti Essay REVISED.doc

I just read the essay and am sitting hear in tears, it is the best thing I have

ever read! I pray that someone out there finally listens and the word is spread.

I just returned last month from Iowa were my 14 year old daughter had surgery to

correct her " corrected " clubfeet (we didn't know this method existed when she

was born and she had 3 surgeries. Our youngest is just 4 months old and has been

lovingly and wonderfuly corrected by Dr. Ponseti, the greatest man on earth!

Please add our name! Also this may seem weird but has anyone thought of maybe

handing this esssay or something like it to Couric (sp?) when she is

outside doing the Today show in Manhattan? She is a mother and very pro being

informed when it comes to medical issues (I don't think she just limits it to

cancer issues). She is very powerful in todays news show arena, it might be

worth a try....

Moshe and Leah parents of

sha (3/3/90) very stiff and painful feet, due to surgeries to " correct "

bilateral clubfeet, Eli (4/24/05) unilateral clubfoot. Happy little boy with

fantastic feet corrected by Dr.Ponseti and 7 other children who all tell their

friends about a wonderful doctor in Iowa that fixed their brother and made their

parents smile again!

wrote:

ee--That was absolutely the most beautiful thing I've ever read.

You brought tears to my eyes. I'm crying like a baby, actually.

Please add our names also.

& Kline, from Pennsylvania, parents of Ava Kline, born

8/4/04 with a right club foot, now a beautiful straight foot thanks to

the Ponseti Method

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Aw Kori you're a Peach, thanks :)

s.

's Dr. Ponseti Essay REVISED.doc

>

>

> , and Everyone,

> here is the email version for the Life Time Achievement Award Essay -

>(I'll send an attachment version also for easier printing and/or editing if

>you choose). I hope this is somewhere with in a hundred miles of what you

>were anticipating. I asked Joyce Roller for more specifics but have not

>heard from her, so I went with what I had and am sending it before you think

>I'm blowing off my assignment here. Actually, ask my husband, I've lost a

>lot of sleep, such a responsibility, such an important undertaking!

>

> If it sucks I'm not offended if you scratch it out and start from scratch.

>Woven throughout you will notice I used your key points. Likewise, if there

>is any mis-information that needs corrected by all means bring it to my

>attention, or if anyone has information prudent to the cause that I totally

>over looked, that too should be brought forth! Because there was not a page

>limit / word limit, I did not limit myself or even attempt to. It's double

>spaced and justified for easier reading. Nor did I bring a case history of

>any particular patient in to it, aiming to be objective and factual, yet

>tell the story in such a way as to convey the man's compassion and the

>legitimacy of this birth defect. I told it from the standpoint of " We the

>parents of children born with clubfoot " ....I do not mean to exclude those

>here who are now adults who were born with clubfoot, but the objective is to

>spread the word that new born babies will not endure the tortures of

>misinformed doctors using out dated treatments.

>

> And with all that as my disclaimer, sitting here insecurely as I toss out

>my wares for inspection, here is the actual essay as it sits on my desk

>tonight.

> Blessings to all,

> ee

>

>

>

> Dr. Ignacio Ponseti Lifetime Achievement Award Essay

>

> by: ee Reese

> September 2005

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

> Five years after the Spanish military initiated an uprising against their

>own Republican government sparking years of Civil War, lin D. Roosevelt

>made his historic 3rd Inaugural Address to the Nation, Pearl Harbor was

>obliterated, the famous Infamy Speech was delivered, and the United States,

>having already suffered twelve years of economic collapse on the heels of

>fighting World War I, entered World War II.

>

> The year was 1941.

> It was the year a young man immigrated to America from Spain to escape

>the post civil war ravages in his homeland.

>

> Historians suggest the Spanish Civil War which ejected this young doctor

>on to American shores was merely a prelude to the World War that he traveled

>across the Atlantic Ocean in effort to escape. They further suggest the

>Spanish war was a testing ground, implying the bombing of Guernica promoted

>advances in twentieth-century warfare techniques and technology.

>

> Fortunately, this era brought forth amazing advances in medical technique

>and technology as well - which also came from Spain.

>

> His name was Ignacio Ponseti. He came to America an immigrant, a young

>doctor escaping a war torn country to enter a country that was engaging into

>a war of epic proportions that very same year. It was a small world after

>all.

>

> Ultimately he arrived at the University of Iowa College of Medicine where

>his assignment was to perform certain follow up studies on patients who had

>been treated for clubfoot according to the " modern " medical standards of

>that time. Disappointed with his findings, the young doctor dedicated his

>life to finding a better way to cure this crippling birth defect.

> Only seven years after his arrival to the United States, post war America

>was a very different place. Luxury automobile owners were sporting the

>newly invented electric car windows. Art Mooney was topping the charts with

>his hit song I'm Looking Over A Four Leaf Clover; and fittingly with this

>new-found era of American prosperity, our young Dr. Ponseti achieved his

>goal. In 1948, through his years of dedicated hands on treatment and

>research, he discovered, then refined, his non-surgical method for

>correcting clubfoot.

>

> The glory of his work is that children no longer have to undergo painful

>surgeries that most often result in a life time of painful feet and

>subsequent surgeries.

> The horror is that fifty-seven years after developing his method, the

>medical community at large continues to practice according to the same

>techniques they used half a century ago when he started, ignoring the

>Ponseti Method despite his decades of follow up studies proving its 95%

>effectiveness rate when performed properly.

>

> In 1941 he was a Spanish Immigrant. Today, he is Professor Emeritus

>Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. The

>doctor, and his method, remain one of the world's best kept secrets as the

>medical community continually refuses to adopt or even recognize the

>validity of his method.

>

> As the parents of children born with this vulgar, crippling, congenital

>birth defect, we consider this unacceptable.

>

> When he was 70 years old the University of Iowa, where he still

>practiced, forced Dr. Ponseti to retire. Two years later, he convinced the

>University to take him back despite his 'advanced' age. He continued to

>perform his miracle on otherwise crippled babies for the next fourteen

>years.

>

> When he was 84, he once again headed in to retirement - then the internet

>happened. Word of his non-surgical method began to spread. As parents

>discovered they had a choice, they began to travel from across the USA and

>from across the ocean seeking out his method for their children. Today,

>twenty years after the University tried to force him to quit, parents are

>still traveling to see him, or one of his few qualified associates. And

>finally, after fifty odd years of dedicated service, the University of Iowa

>Hospital finally recognized Dr. Ponseti's contribution to both their

>facility and the medical field by naming a branch of their clinic after the

>man who has given his life to giving children happy feet.

> Word continues to spread by mouth and internet about this astonishing,

>dedicated man and his incredible journey that started half a world away a

>half a century ago, but as the parents of children born with clubfoot we

>face two major obstacles.

> First, to be completely candid, time is ticking. Dr. Ponseti will

>celebrate his 91st birthday in June of this year (2005) yet he continues to

>serve parents and babies in his clinic at the University of Iowa - the

>oldest of hands gently repairing the youngest of patients.

> " Do not cry, Baby. " The gentle, quiet words roll off his tongue in a

>thick Spanish accent that immediately begins to sooth the anxious child with

>their music. " If you cry, then I will cry, and then my nurse will cry and

>then your Ma'Ma will cry. We will all be crying! Do not cry, Baby. " and

>turning to the mother, " Here Ma'Ma, take your baby, comfort him, I will not

>work on a crying baby, let him calm down. " He points to the old rocking

>chair where he so often sits to do his exams. The mother rocks her baby.

>The room smiles. The mother, the father, the nurses, the students, and Dr.

>Ponseti, the 90 year old doctor pauses in his work for as long as it takes

>as if this infant is the only infant in the world and time has stood still

>for it.

>

> He continues to teach any doctor willing to learn; he consults daily via

>email and telephone not only with other doctors, but personally answering

>the calls of distraught parents and sorting through the photos and videos

>parents send showing their baby's feet at various stages of various

>treatments. He turns no one away.

> " You must come right away. " He is on the phone answering the email plea

>sent with digital photos of a 19 month old boy with deformed feet despite a

>year and a half of treatments and physical therapy. " I can help " , says the

>doctor, " but there is no time to be lost, you must come right away. You get

>here and I will see you. "

> Because of the previous nineteen months of substandard treatment this

>child will never be completely corrected nor ever know what it means to have

>pain-free feet despite Dr. Ponseti's best efforts. But though his efforts,

>another believer is born, who spreads the word of his miracles so no other

>child has to endure what her son must endure.

> Slowly, through the efforts of parents like us spreading the word and

>insisting we have alternatives to surgery, the list of qualified Ponseti

>Method physicians is growing annually. But time is ticking and the method

>is at risk of being lost forever.

>

> The second obstacle we face is the medical world, sadly enough. Through

>the internet the term Ponseti Method has gained popularity, even if the

>actual method has not. Suddenly the clinics are flooded with cheap

>imitations throwing around the words " Ponseti Method " although they are not

>practicing the Ponseti Method in any true form. These doctors are not

>skilled in the method, they have received no formal training, and

>unfortunately, most parents don't know the difference until it is too late,

>until they can no longer deny their child is not getting any better and may

>in fact, be getting worse. So they finally do their own research. They

>finally make that call, and Dr. Ponseti says to come right away, because he

>always says come right away, because he always holds out hope to the very

>end. Because every baby becomes his baby.

> But these children do not always arrive in time to be rescued from their

>horrible fate, because while clubfoot is nearly 100% correctable, there is a

>limited window of opportunity that allows the miracle to take place. Once

>the window is closed, the basic human anatomy of the foot no longer lets a

>non-surgical correction happen. And if the baby arrives to Ponseti's care

>too late, that baby will forever suffer the consequences of inadequate care.

> With so many unqualified doctors suddenly claiming to use the Ponseti

>Method, yet doing something quite different, the results are predictably

>disastrous. Thus we risk that the method will be eventually proven

>ineffective as these results are published and the public and medical

>communities combined rally against the Ponseti Method for it's

>ineffectiveness with out realizing this lack of success is not due to the

>method not working, but due to gross and incompetent misuse of the method by

>untrained physicians.

>

> And when the that happens, the method will be lost forever. There are

>already claims that Ponseti's method is only perhaps 70, 60 or 50%

>effective - when in fact, qualified doctors who use the method according to

>the protocol are consistently achieving 95% success rates year after year

>after year.

>

> And again we say, as the parents of babies born with this ugly, crippling

>birth defect, this is completely unacceptable.

>

> So how do we know? How is a parent who has just been dealt the crushing

>news their baby has a major birth defect supposed to know the difference

>when any doctor who has heard of clubfeet is suddenly proclaiming to be

>advanced in the method of treating either though Ponseti's method or more

>traditional modes? When a baby is born with a birth defect, and one as

>physically ugly as clubfoot often is, a parent is eager to relieve their

>own sense of guilt and their child's suffering. They often are so eager

>they blindly trust the local doctor - after all, he's a doctor, he should

>know. And when we ask, when we finally get around to noticing something is

>wrong and we ask, we are riddled with long technical answers that leave us

>feeling inferior and confused and ashamed of ourselves for questioning his

>superiority. So how do we know what to do?

>

> Through public awareness like this, for starters.

>

> In traditional treatments, the infant is often put through months of

>serial casting where their foot is manually wrenched in to a normal looking

>position and casted in to that shape as it grows. As recent as the 1960's,

>Dr. Dennis Brown writes that he used mechanical devices to wrench the foot

>in to position prior to casting. Somehow, the Foot Abduction Brace (FAB)

>which is used in the Ponseti Method became known popularly as the Dennis

>Brown Bar, or DBB. (We call it the FAB, wanting no association between Dr.

>Ponseti's gentle care and the horrific mechanical tortures used by Dr.

>Brown.)

> At the end of all this the child almost always undergoes corrective

>surgery anyway because the bones remain misaligned. The surgery involves

>taking the foot apart and reassembling it to look normal on the outside even

>though it has been grossly disassembled and remains deformed on the inside.

>The result is the bones are not allowed to grow naturally as they should;

>scar tissue builds up; joints stiffen; tendons are unable to stretch; more

>surgeries become necessary to loosen a tendon, to scrape out scar tissue, to

>add steel pins or remove steel pins. And still the foot remains misshapen

>and painful to use, often not fitting in any type of regular shoe.

> The only thing the Ponseti Method has in common with the traditional

>method of treatment is the term Serial Casting, which implies a series of

>casts are applied to the child. In the 1940's Dr. Ponseti discovered what

>all the others had overlooked - the delicate infrastructure of the foot and

>the logical, sequential placement of it's twenty-six bones. The bones in a

>clubbed foot are all there, they're really OK, but like a jigsaw puzzle,

>they come mixed up in the box and need put back together to make the final

>picture. Traditional methods of correction do not account for this.

>Traditional thinking seems to believe the bones are wrong, that the bones

>need fixed. But they aren't wrong, and they don't need fixed, they just

>need gentle hands and careful eyes placing them in the correct spot like the

>intricate puzzle they are - not sawed upon to fit where a doctor wants them

>or crammed in to positions where they were not intended by nature to fit.

>

> Treated properly by the Ponseti Method, the tiny new born bones are very

>gently, slowly and methodically manipulated by gentle hands in to their

>proper alignment where they are expertly casted in to place for a period of

>five to seven days. Again and again the process is repeated over the course

>of approximately five weeks - each bone individually identified, placed in

>its necessary position according to a certain sequence of movements, and

>casted in to place, maintained for approximately a week as the foot adapts.

> Most infants sleep through the process as the doctor finds the correct

>bones and moves them carefully, and always sequentially, in to their proper

>position (compared to the physical restraint babies require using other

>methods). Others eat or play. And almost none cry, because it is neither

>frightening nor painful. No drugs are given, no shots, no restraints, the

>parents are always present, holding or other wise comforting the baby, and

>if fear does creep in and cause the child anxiety, the process is stopped

>until the baby is again feeling calm and secure because an anxious child

>will be tense, and tense bones and muscles cannot be properly aligned

>anyway. So the whole Ponseti Method rests largely on maintaining a calm,

>happy baby though the correction process. The entire visit is usually over

>with in less than a half an hour.

>

> While we don't want Ponseti's method mixed up with any new-age mentality

>that it ranks with acupuncture, herbs, aroma therapy or the beating of drums

>during the twelfth hour of the full moon as Venus enters the shadow of

>ars - neither does this method belong to the ranks of sterile surgical

>rooms, recovery rooms, antibiotics, stitches, face masks, needles, tubes or

>electronic monitoring devices.

> Completely scientific, completely proven, completely safe and effective,

>the Ponseti Method is a very gentle and organic procedure saving children

>from their crippling condition.

> The average infant born with clubfoot has corrected, fully functional feet

>with in five to seven weeks of serial casting when the casting is performed

>in this manner. In other words, this child treated correctly by the Ponseti

>Method will have normal feet before he is ever old enough to realize they

>were missing in the first place.

>

> When the manipulation of the bones is complete, the infant is moved out

>of casting and in to the Foot Abduction Brace (FAB) - a small pair of baby

>booties connected by a bar that runs between them. Set at very specific

>degrees and measurements to match each individual infant, the baby wears

>this brace for 23 hours a day for the first three months of use. From there

>the amount of time the baby wears the brace is gradually reduced to

>approximately twelve to fourteen hours of wear - bed time - as the bones

>grow and experience their natural hardening process. Unlike the

>unfortunate children who might wear the casts for six to twelve months in

>the traditional methods, babies who wear the FAB are not delayed in

>development. They can roll over, crawl, and eventually cruise with the FAB

>on their feet meeting every milestone on time. They still fit in to normal

>cloths, cribs, high chairs and car seats with the FAB on their feet, it

>becomes only a small extension of the child, for a small part of their life.

>

> By the end of the treatment period, the feet have grown, the bones have

>hardened as they do, and the correction is now maintained simply by the

>natural growth and exercise of the foot. Because no bones were cut,

>lengthened or shortened, no pins were surgically inserted, no tendons were

>cut, no muscles were peeled back to expose the bones for surgery - there is

>nothing to heal, nothing to infect, and nothing to malfunction. The entire

>foot can now grow and function completely normally for the rest of that

>individual's life.

>

> No surgical theaters. No anesthesia. No pain killers. No antibiotics. No

>hospital stays. No IV's. No starving the infant for hours prior to the

>operation. No separation of the infant from his parents. Reduced cost of

>treatment. Ninety-five percent success rate. The promise of normal,

>natural feet. No ugly scars on the outside of the skin, or crippling scar

>tissue growing on the inside. Fifty years of use and follow up studies to

>back it.

>

> And still, no one wants to listen.

>

> And still, as the parents of children born with clubfoot, as citizens in

>the most medically advanced nation on this earth, we find surgical treatment

>of clubfoot not only barbaric, but irresponsible, negligent to the extent of

>malpractice...and completely unacceptable.

>

> Why then will no body listen?

> Because we're talking about feet? Because there is no drama to a

>non-surgical method? Ask the parents of children born with clubfoot if

>their child's birth defect lacks drama.

>

> According to the March of Dimes:

> Neural Tube Defects (NTDs) affect 1 per 2,000 births.

> Down Syndrome ranks at 1 in 800 births.

> Sickle Cell Anemia affects from 1 in 500 to 1 in 1000 depending on racial

>factors.

> Cleft Palate affects 1 in 1000.

> And Clubfoot is calculated to affect 1 in 735 births annually in the

>United States, with higher rates abroad.

> It can be estimated by 2002 population figures that Clubfoot affects

>approximately 4,000 to 5,000 American newborn babies each year. More than

>Neural Tube Defects. More than Down Syndrome. More than Cleft Palate.

>More or the same as Sickle Cell Anemia

> Even the March of Dimes remains unaware as their website suggests as many

>as 50% of the infants born with Clubfoot will require a surgical correction;

>that's forty-five percent more surgeries than necessary. The Ponseti Method

>averages a low 5 percent surgical rate.

>

> But these are feet we're talking about, right? Who wants to pay any

>attention to feet when there are much more exciting and dramatic (although

>less prevalent) birth defects to talk about?

>

> Why talk about a non-surgical medical procedure when there are much more

>colorful, gruesome, theatrical surgeries to broadcast? Blood sells, right?

>Images of oxygen masks, heart monitors, teams of doctors in their frocks

>hunched over a patient who is cut wide open? Or a condition with no known

>cure? That's good television. Sick children with no cure in sight.

>Twisted feet torturously dissected is good television. A non-surgical

>method created by a Spanish Civil War Veteran in 1948 who still practices at

>the age of 91 years old - is also good television because behind the

>producer who has the guts to broadcast this are 4,000 more babies being born

>this year who are at risk of having their feet cut up unnecessarily - and

>you could save them.

> We are here to nominate Doctor Ignacio Ponseti for the Lifetime

>Achievement Award because he has truly given his life to these crippled

>babies. His entire adult life, rapidly approaching a century old, has been

>dedicated to achieving not personal goals for his own fame and fortune

>because if that were the case, he and his method would be world famous by

>now! But to achieving a happy life minus the pain of deformed feet for

>thousands of babies world wide. Abraham Lincoln said it best, " I can't

>think if my feet hurt. " If ever a time in history demanded our future

>generations have clear minds to think with, it is now.

>

> If awarded, Dr. Ponseti's wish is characteristically unselfish. When

>asked, his only wish was that he be able to contribute more than he already

>has, that his work be continued after he is gone though the veins of his

>foundation: The Clubfoot Clinic Fund.

>

> This foundation supports research of clubfoot so perhaps the one in a

>thousand babies currently born in the US each year with this birth defect

>can be diminished if not eliminated completely (scientists believe they have

>recently isolated the gene that causes clubfoot); it supports the continued

>development of better treatment options such as better casting materials and

>better designs of the Foot Abduction Brace; it helps pay for treatments that

>otherwise could not be afforded by economically challenged parents; it sends

>supplies and braces to the poor and under-developed countries around the

>world; it supports bringing in doctors from both America and over seas to

>train with Dr. Ponseti and his colleagues in Iowa so they may take the

>method home and continue its use; it funds the development of clubfoot

>clinics in 3rd world countries where the rate of clubfoot per capita is much

>higher than it is here in the US.

>

> Granted his wish, the sky would be the limit. More doctors could afford

>to train under Dr. Ponseti; an educated medical community could identify and

>eliminate from practice those who are performing the method falsely;

>teleconferencing technology could be put in place so doctors world wide

>could consult with one another directly, sharing video images, photos,

>x-rays, advice, help and ultimately, success. Public awareness in the

>general population could be raised so eventually no child will have to

>suffer the consequences of treatment that became outdated three years after

>their great-grandparents came home from WWII - because through public

>awareness, those methods would become as happily obsolete as Art Mooney's

>1948 top ten song.

>

> Additionally, although Dr. Ponseti did not request this, we would like to

>organize a reunion of his patients, both those who have been treated by his

>gentle hands in person, and those who were treated by his method thanks to

>the few doctors who have taken the time to learn it. We would like to

>publicly honor the man who gave our children back their feet.

>

> We nominate Dr. Ponseti not as a small group of mothers who meet at the

>coffee shop with too much time on our hands - but as hundreds, if not

>thousands of mothers, and fathers, and grandparents, aunts and uncles and

>children young and old who have experienced clubfoot first hand, who have

>educated themselves, their friends and their neighbors, who have continued

>for years now the daunting task of speaking loudly that the world might

>finally listen and finally eliminate the primitive treatments still in use

>today on our young babies.

>

> We nominate Dr. Ponseti on behalf of the 45,000 (yes, forty-five thousand)

>babies who will be born in the U.S. over the next ten years who will suffer

>this birth defect.

>

> It's been close to sixty years. It's time this great American story is

>told to the world. It is time the world knew medical science has escaped

>the 1940's and moved in to the twenty-first century.

>

> He was an immigrant escaping the Spanish Civil War arriving in America the

>year we entered World War II. Now he is a 91 year old doctor who still

>walks to work each day to treat his tiniest of patients, because if not Dr.

>Ponseti, then who? The world must learn and new young doctors must move in

>to fill the shoes, to advance the method, to save the babies.

>

> We, the parents of children born with clubfoot implore you to explore the

>rich and colorful life of this silent American icon so he will not only get

>the recognition he deserves after half a century of service, but also so no

>other baby will have to endure the horrors of having their feet taken apart

>and put artificially back together unnecessarily.

>

> If nothing else happens from our attempt to honor Dr. Ponseti with the

>Lifetime Achievement Award, one very key thing has happened right before

>your very eyes: you, the reader, are now informed.

>

> We the parents of children born with clubfoot have reached one more

>person, who will, some day, tell two friends who will, someday, tell two

>friends. And thus, the Ponseti Method has survived for half a century one

>person at a time - and truly, that is probably the only reward Dr. Ponseti

>would ever ask for, that the word be spread, even if by only one mouth and

>one ear at a time. He doesn't want awards, he wants to see an end to the

>senseless brutality our trusted doctors are inflicting upon our tiniest of

>babies. Once that is accomplished, then, maybe then, he will finally feel

>it is safe for him to retire and pass his torch to the next generation

>trusting we will keep it burning.

>

>

>

>

>

> Summary and Contact Information:

>

> There are two forms of clubfeet. The first is relatively minor and known

>as Positional Clubfoot often due to a lack of amniotic fluid in the uterus

>cramping the baby's development. The second is Congenital Clubfeet, it is

>considered idiopathic, meaning doctors are not entirely sure what causes it

>, but suspect it caused by an unknown genetic factor coming in to play

>affecting the baby at approximately 20 weeks post conception. There also

>appears to be a slight inheritance factor involved as well, although not

>always. Because clubfoot is not present in the early weeks of development

>when most ultrasounds are performed, the condition is often not discovered

>until the child's birth.

> The Ponseti Method of Clubfoot correction is superior to the traditional

>method of treatment in that the baby's bones are gently persuaded to move in

>to their natural position through a process of systematic serial castings.

>No surgeries take place. No bones are cut, broken, or pinned back together.

>No muscles or tendons are stripped. No joints are penetrated. The method

>is completely non-intrusive. Done correctly the foot is allowed to continue

>its natural progression in to adulthood allowing these child to live normal,

>active lives.

> With correction performed properly by a qualified physician and with the

>parent's diligent and dedicated use of the FAB (Foot Abduction Brace),

>babies treated by the Ponseti Method enjoy a 95% success rate, i.e., 95% of

>the babies will never need a surgical attempt at correction.

>

> For more information about the clubfoot deformity, please contact the

>University of Iowa Clubfoot Clinic at (319)356-3469 or visit

>http://www.vh.org/pediatric/patient/orthopaedics/clubfeet/index.html for

>medical reports, articles, FAQ's, testimonials and photos. Parents or

>family members of a clubfooted baby are urged to join the nosurgery4clubfoot

>group at Yahoo! groups, nosurgery4clubfoot for advice and

>support.

>

>

>

> This Nomination is sent to you by the Parents of Children Born With

>Clubfoot and the children born with clubfoot who became the victims of

>misinformed doctors, as well as the children who have most blessedly been

>cured by the life's work of Dr. Ignacio Ponseti - and all the clubfooted

>babies yet to come.

>

> Signed and Sincerely,

>

> ee and Chriss Reese of Oklahoma

> - parents of two clubfooted sons, who remains somewhat crippled

>because we did not know yet about Dr. Ponseti, and Everett who enjoys

>perfect feet thanks to Dr. Ponseti.

> Harvey and June Reese of Oklahoma

> - parents of one clubfooted child, Mark, who remains with crippled feet

>because no one knew about the Ponseti Method.

> Leroy Reese of Oklahoma

> - father of one clubfooted son, Greg, who remains with crippled feet

>because no one knew about the Ponseti Method.

>

> Others add your names like this too and grow the list

>

>

>

>

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Aw Kori you're a Peach, thanks :)

s.

's Dr. Ponseti Essay REVISED.doc

>

>

> , and Everyone,

> here is the email version for the Life Time Achievement Award Essay -

>(I'll send an attachment version also for easier printing and/or editing if

>you choose). I hope this is somewhere with in a hundred miles of what you

>were anticipating. I asked Joyce Roller for more specifics but have not

>heard from her, so I went with what I had and am sending it before you think

>I'm blowing off my assignment here. Actually, ask my husband, I've lost a

>lot of sleep, such a responsibility, such an important undertaking!

>

> If it sucks I'm not offended if you scratch it out and start from scratch.

>Woven throughout you will notice I used your key points. Likewise, if there

>is any mis-information that needs corrected by all means bring it to my

>attention, or if anyone has information prudent to the cause that I totally

>over looked, that too should be brought forth! Because there was not a page

>limit / word limit, I did not limit myself or even attempt to. It's double

>spaced and justified for easier reading. Nor did I bring a case history of

>any particular patient in to it, aiming to be objective and factual, yet

>tell the story in such a way as to convey the man's compassion and the

>legitimacy of this birth defect. I told it from the standpoint of " We the

>parents of children born with clubfoot " ....I do not mean to exclude those

>here who are now adults who were born with clubfoot, but the objective is to

>spread the word that new born babies will not endure the tortures of

>misinformed doctors using out dated treatments.

>

> And with all that as my disclaimer, sitting here insecurely as I toss out

>my wares for inspection, here is the actual essay as it sits on my desk

>tonight.

> Blessings to all,

> ee

>

>

>

> Dr. Ignacio Ponseti Lifetime Achievement Award Essay

>

> by: ee Reese

> September 2005

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

> Five years after the Spanish military initiated an uprising against their

>own Republican government sparking years of Civil War, lin D. Roosevelt

>made his historic 3rd Inaugural Address to the Nation, Pearl Harbor was

>obliterated, the famous Infamy Speech was delivered, and the United States,

>having already suffered twelve years of economic collapse on the heels of

>fighting World War I, entered World War II.

>

> The year was 1941.

> It was the year a young man immigrated to America from Spain to escape

>the post civil war ravages in his homeland.

>

> Historians suggest the Spanish Civil War which ejected this young doctor

>on to American shores was merely a prelude to the World War that he traveled

>across the Atlantic Ocean in effort to escape. They further suggest the

>Spanish war was a testing ground, implying the bombing of Guernica promoted

>advances in twentieth-century warfare techniques and technology.

>

> Fortunately, this era brought forth amazing advances in medical technique

>and technology as well - which also came from Spain.

>

> His name was Ignacio Ponseti. He came to America an immigrant, a young

>doctor escaping a war torn country to enter a country that was engaging into

>a war of epic proportions that very same year. It was a small world after

>all.

>

> Ultimately he arrived at the University of Iowa College of Medicine where

>his assignment was to perform certain follow up studies on patients who had

>been treated for clubfoot according to the " modern " medical standards of

>that time. Disappointed with his findings, the young doctor dedicated his

>life to finding a better way to cure this crippling birth defect.

> Only seven years after his arrival to the United States, post war America

>was a very different place. Luxury automobile owners were sporting the

>newly invented electric car windows. Art Mooney was topping the charts with

>his hit song I'm Looking Over A Four Leaf Clover; and fittingly with this

>new-found era of American prosperity, our young Dr. Ponseti achieved his

>goal. In 1948, through his years of dedicated hands on treatment and

>research, he discovered, then refined, his non-surgical method for

>correcting clubfoot.

>

> The glory of his work is that children no longer have to undergo painful

>surgeries that most often result in a life time of painful feet and

>subsequent surgeries.

> The horror is that fifty-seven years after developing his method, the

>medical community at large continues to practice according to the same

>techniques they used half a century ago when he started, ignoring the

>Ponseti Method despite his decades of follow up studies proving its 95%

>effectiveness rate when performed properly.

>

> In 1941 he was a Spanish Immigrant. Today, he is Professor Emeritus

>Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. The

>doctor, and his method, remain one of the world's best kept secrets as the

>medical community continually refuses to adopt or even recognize the

>validity of his method.

>

> As the parents of children born with this vulgar, crippling, congenital

>birth defect, we consider this unacceptable.

>

> When he was 70 years old the University of Iowa, where he still

>practiced, forced Dr. Ponseti to retire. Two years later, he convinced the

>University to take him back despite his 'advanced' age. He continued to

>perform his miracle on otherwise crippled babies for the next fourteen

>years.

>

> When he was 84, he once again headed in to retirement - then the internet

>happened. Word of his non-surgical method began to spread. As parents

>discovered they had a choice, they began to travel from across the USA and

>from across the ocean seeking out his method for their children. Today,

>twenty years after the University tried to force him to quit, parents are

>still traveling to see him, or one of his few qualified associates. And

>finally, after fifty odd years of dedicated service, the University of Iowa

>Hospital finally recognized Dr. Ponseti's contribution to both their

>facility and the medical field by naming a branch of their clinic after the

>man who has given his life to giving children happy feet.

> Word continues to spread by mouth and internet about this astonishing,

>dedicated man and his incredible journey that started half a world away a

>half a century ago, but as the parents of children born with clubfoot we

>face two major obstacles.

> First, to be completely candid, time is ticking. Dr. Ponseti will

>celebrate his 91st birthday in June of this year (2005) yet he continues to

>serve parents and babies in his clinic at the University of Iowa - the

>oldest of hands gently repairing the youngest of patients.

> " Do not cry, Baby. " The gentle, quiet words roll off his tongue in a

>thick Spanish accent that immediately begins to sooth the anxious child with

>their music. " If you cry, then I will cry, and then my nurse will cry and

>then your Ma'Ma will cry. We will all be crying! Do not cry, Baby. " and

>turning to the mother, " Here Ma'Ma, take your baby, comfort him, I will not

>work on a crying baby, let him calm down. " He points to the old rocking

>chair where he so often sits to do his exams. The mother rocks her baby.

>The room smiles. The mother, the father, the nurses, the students, and Dr.

>Ponseti, the 90 year old doctor pauses in his work for as long as it takes

>as if this infant is the only infant in the world and time has stood still

>for it.

>

> He continues to teach any doctor willing to learn; he consults daily via

>email and telephone not only with other doctors, but personally answering

>the calls of distraught parents and sorting through the photos and videos

>parents send showing their baby's feet at various stages of various

>treatments. He turns no one away.

> " You must come right away. " He is on the phone answering the email plea

>sent with digital photos of a 19 month old boy with deformed feet despite a

>year and a half of treatments and physical therapy. " I can help " , says the

>doctor, " but there is no time to be lost, you must come right away. You get

>here and I will see you. "

> Because of the previous nineteen months of substandard treatment this

>child will never be completely corrected nor ever know what it means to have

>pain-free feet despite Dr. Ponseti's best efforts. But though his efforts,

>another believer is born, who spreads the word of his miracles so no other

>child has to endure what her son must endure.

> Slowly, through the efforts of parents like us spreading the word and

>insisting we have alternatives to surgery, the list of qualified Ponseti

>Method physicians is growing annually. But time is ticking and the method

>is at risk of being lost forever.

>

> The second obstacle we face is the medical world, sadly enough. Through

>the internet the term Ponseti Method has gained popularity, even if the

>actual method has not. Suddenly the clinics are flooded with cheap

>imitations throwing around the words " Ponseti Method " although they are not

>practicing the Ponseti Method in any true form. These doctors are not

>skilled in the method, they have received no formal training, and

>unfortunately, most parents don't know the difference until it is too late,

>until they can no longer deny their child is not getting any better and may

>in fact, be getting worse. So they finally do their own research. They

>finally make that call, and Dr. Ponseti says to come right away, because he

>always says come right away, because he always holds out hope to the very

>end. Because every baby becomes his baby.

> But these children do not always arrive in time to be rescued from their

>horrible fate, because while clubfoot is nearly 100% correctable, there is a

>limited window of opportunity that allows the miracle to take place. Once

>the window is closed, the basic human anatomy of the foot no longer lets a

>non-surgical correction happen. And if the baby arrives to Ponseti's care

>too late, that baby will forever suffer the consequences of inadequate care.

> With so many unqualified doctors suddenly claiming to use the Ponseti

>Method, yet doing something quite different, the results are predictably

>disastrous. Thus we risk that the method will be eventually proven

>ineffective as these results are published and the public and medical

>communities combined rally against the Ponseti Method for it's

>ineffectiveness with out realizing this lack of success is not due to the

>method not working, but due to gross and incompetent misuse of the method by

>untrained physicians.

>

> And when the that happens, the method will be lost forever. There are

>already claims that Ponseti's method is only perhaps 70, 60 or 50%

>effective - when in fact, qualified doctors who use the method according to

>the protocol are consistently achieving 95% success rates year after year

>after year.

>

> And again we say, as the parents of babies born with this ugly, crippling

>birth defect, this is completely unacceptable.

>

> So how do we know? How is a parent who has just been dealt the crushing

>news their baby has a major birth defect supposed to know the difference

>when any doctor who has heard of clubfeet is suddenly proclaiming to be

>advanced in the method of treating either though Ponseti's method or more

>traditional modes? When a baby is born with a birth defect, and one as

>physically ugly as clubfoot often is, a parent is eager to relieve their

>own sense of guilt and their child's suffering. They often are so eager

>they blindly trust the local doctor - after all, he's a doctor, he should

>know. And when we ask, when we finally get around to noticing something is

>wrong and we ask, we are riddled with long technical answers that leave us

>feeling inferior and confused and ashamed of ourselves for questioning his

>superiority. So how do we know what to do?

>

> Through public awareness like this, for starters.

>

> In traditional treatments, the infant is often put through months of

>serial casting where their foot is manually wrenched in to a normal looking

>position and casted in to that shape as it grows. As recent as the 1960's,

>Dr. Dennis Brown writes that he used mechanical devices to wrench the foot

>in to position prior to casting. Somehow, the Foot Abduction Brace (FAB)

>which is used in the Ponseti Method became known popularly as the Dennis

>Brown Bar, or DBB. (We call it the FAB, wanting no association between Dr.

>Ponseti's gentle care and the horrific mechanical tortures used by Dr.

>Brown.)

> At the end of all this the child almost always undergoes corrective

>surgery anyway because the bones remain misaligned. The surgery involves

>taking the foot apart and reassembling it to look normal on the outside even

>though it has been grossly disassembled and remains deformed on the inside.

>The result is the bones are not allowed to grow naturally as they should;

>scar tissue builds up; joints stiffen; tendons are unable to stretch; more

>surgeries become necessary to loosen a tendon, to scrape out scar tissue, to

>add steel pins or remove steel pins. And still the foot remains misshapen

>and painful to use, often not fitting in any type of regular shoe.

> The only thing the Ponseti Method has in common with the traditional

>method of treatment is the term Serial Casting, which implies a series of

>casts are applied to the child. In the 1940's Dr. Ponseti discovered what

>all the others had overlooked - the delicate infrastructure of the foot and

>the logical, sequential placement of it's twenty-six bones. The bones in a

>clubbed foot are all there, they're really OK, but like a jigsaw puzzle,

>they come mixed up in the box and need put back together to make the final

>picture. Traditional methods of correction do not account for this.

>Traditional thinking seems to believe the bones are wrong, that the bones

>need fixed. But they aren't wrong, and they don't need fixed, they just

>need gentle hands and careful eyes placing them in the correct spot like the

>intricate puzzle they are - not sawed upon to fit where a doctor wants them

>or crammed in to positions where they were not intended by nature to fit.

>

> Treated properly by the Ponseti Method, the tiny new born bones are very

>gently, slowly and methodically manipulated by gentle hands in to their

>proper alignment where they are expertly casted in to place for a period of

>five to seven days. Again and again the process is repeated over the course

>of approximately five weeks - each bone individually identified, placed in

>its necessary position according to a certain sequence of movements, and

>casted in to place, maintained for approximately a week as the foot adapts.

> Most infants sleep through the process as the doctor finds the correct

>bones and moves them carefully, and always sequentially, in to their proper

>position (compared to the physical restraint babies require using other

>methods). Others eat or play. And almost none cry, because it is neither

>frightening nor painful. No drugs are given, no shots, no restraints, the

>parents are always present, holding or other wise comforting the baby, and

>if fear does creep in and cause the child anxiety, the process is stopped

>until the baby is again feeling calm and secure because an anxious child

>will be tense, and tense bones and muscles cannot be properly aligned

>anyway. So the whole Ponseti Method rests largely on maintaining a calm,

>happy baby though the correction process. The entire visit is usually over

>with in less than a half an hour.

>

> While we don't want Ponseti's method mixed up with any new-age mentality

>that it ranks with acupuncture, herbs, aroma therapy or the beating of drums

>during the twelfth hour of the full moon as Venus enters the shadow of

>ars - neither does this method belong to the ranks of sterile surgical

>rooms, recovery rooms, antibiotics, stitches, face masks, needles, tubes or

>electronic monitoring devices.

> Completely scientific, completely proven, completely safe and effective,

>the Ponseti Method is a very gentle and organic procedure saving children

>from their crippling condition.

> The average infant born with clubfoot has corrected, fully functional feet

>with in five to seven weeks of serial casting when the casting is performed

>in this manner. In other words, this child treated correctly by the Ponseti

>Method will have normal feet before he is ever old enough to realize they

>were missing in the first place.

>

> When the manipulation of the bones is complete, the infant is moved out

>of casting and in to the Foot Abduction Brace (FAB) - a small pair of baby

>booties connected by a bar that runs between them. Set at very specific

>degrees and measurements to match each individual infant, the baby wears

>this brace for 23 hours a day for the first three months of use. From there

>the amount of time the baby wears the brace is gradually reduced to

>approximately twelve to fourteen hours of wear - bed time - as the bones

>grow and experience their natural hardening process. Unlike the

>unfortunate children who might wear the casts for six to twelve months in

>the traditional methods, babies who wear the FAB are not delayed in

>development. They can roll over, crawl, and eventually cruise with the FAB

>on their feet meeting every milestone on time. They still fit in to normal

>cloths, cribs, high chairs and car seats with the FAB on their feet, it

>becomes only a small extension of the child, for a small part of their life.

>

> By the end of the treatment period, the feet have grown, the bones have

>hardened as they do, and the correction is now maintained simply by the

>natural growth and exercise of the foot. Because no bones were cut,

>lengthened or shortened, no pins were surgically inserted, no tendons were

>cut, no muscles were peeled back to expose the bones for surgery - there is

>nothing to heal, nothing to infect, and nothing to malfunction. The entire

>foot can now grow and function completely normally for the rest of that

>individual's life.

>

> No surgical theaters. No anesthesia. No pain killers. No antibiotics. No

>hospital stays. No IV's. No starving the infant for hours prior to the

>operation. No separation of the infant from his parents. Reduced cost of

>treatment. Ninety-five percent success rate. The promise of normal,

>natural feet. No ugly scars on the outside of the skin, or crippling scar

>tissue growing on the inside. Fifty years of use and follow up studies to

>back it.

>

> And still, no one wants to listen.

>

> And still, as the parents of children born with clubfoot, as citizens in

>the most medically advanced nation on this earth, we find surgical treatment

>of clubfoot not only barbaric, but irresponsible, negligent to the extent of

>malpractice...and completely unacceptable.

>

> Why then will no body listen?

> Because we're talking about feet? Because there is no drama to a

>non-surgical method? Ask the parents of children born with clubfoot if

>their child's birth defect lacks drama.

>

> According to the March of Dimes:

> Neural Tube Defects (NTDs) affect 1 per 2,000 births.

> Down Syndrome ranks at 1 in 800 births.

> Sickle Cell Anemia affects from 1 in 500 to 1 in 1000 depending on racial

>factors.

> Cleft Palate affects 1 in 1000.

> And Clubfoot is calculated to affect 1 in 735 births annually in the

>United States, with higher rates abroad.

> It can be estimated by 2002 population figures that Clubfoot affects

>approximately 4,000 to 5,000 American newborn babies each year. More than

>Neural Tube Defects. More than Down Syndrome. More than Cleft Palate.

>More or the same as Sickle Cell Anemia

> Even the March of Dimes remains unaware as their website suggests as many

>as 50% of the infants born with Clubfoot will require a surgical correction;

>that's forty-five percent more surgeries than necessary. The Ponseti Method

>averages a low 5 percent surgical rate.

>

> But these are feet we're talking about, right? Who wants to pay any

>attention to feet when there are much more exciting and dramatic (although

>less prevalent) birth defects to talk about?

>

> Why talk about a non-surgical medical procedure when there are much more

>colorful, gruesome, theatrical surgeries to broadcast? Blood sells, right?

>Images of oxygen masks, heart monitors, teams of doctors in their frocks

>hunched over a patient who is cut wide open? Or a condition with no known

>cure? That's good television. Sick children with no cure in sight.

>Twisted feet torturously dissected is good television. A non-surgical

>method created by a Spanish Civil War Veteran in 1948 who still practices at

>the age of 91 years old - is also good television because behind the

>producer who has the guts to broadcast this are 4,000 more babies being born

>this year who are at risk of having their feet cut up unnecessarily - and

>you could save them.

> We are here to nominate Doctor Ignacio Ponseti for the Lifetime

>Achievement Award because he has truly given his life to these crippled

>babies. His entire adult life, rapidly approaching a century old, has been

>dedicated to achieving not personal goals for his own fame and fortune

>because if that were the case, he and his method would be world famous by

>now! But to achieving a happy life minus the pain of deformed feet for

>thousands of babies world wide. Abraham Lincoln said it best, " I can't

>think if my feet hurt. " If ever a time in history demanded our future

>generations have clear minds to think with, it is now.

>

> If awarded, Dr. Ponseti's wish is characteristically unselfish. When

>asked, his only wish was that he be able to contribute more than he already

>has, that his work be continued after he is gone though the veins of his

>foundation: The Clubfoot Clinic Fund.

>

> This foundation supports research of clubfoot so perhaps the one in a

>thousand babies currently born in the US each year with this birth defect

>can be diminished if not eliminated completely (scientists believe they have

>recently isolated the gene that causes clubfoot); it supports the continued

>development of better treatment options such as better casting materials and

>better designs of the Foot Abduction Brace; it helps pay for treatments that

>otherwise could not be afforded by economically challenged parents; it sends

>supplies and braces to the poor and under-developed countries around the

>world; it supports bringing in doctors from both America and over seas to

>train with Dr. Ponseti and his colleagues in Iowa so they may take the

>method home and continue its use; it funds the development of clubfoot

>clinics in 3rd world countries where the rate of clubfoot per capita is much

>higher than it is here in the US.

>

> Granted his wish, the sky would be the limit. More doctors could afford

>to train under Dr. Ponseti; an educated medical community could identify and

>eliminate from practice those who are performing the method falsely;

>teleconferencing technology could be put in place so doctors world wide

>could consult with one another directly, sharing video images, photos,

>x-rays, advice, help and ultimately, success. Public awareness in the

>general population could be raised so eventually no child will have to

>suffer the consequences of treatment that became outdated three years after

>their great-grandparents came home from WWII - because through public

>awareness, those methods would become as happily obsolete as Art Mooney's

>1948 top ten song.

>

> Additionally, although Dr. Ponseti did not request this, we would like to

>organize a reunion of his patients, both those who have been treated by his

>gentle hands in person, and those who were treated by his method thanks to

>the few doctors who have taken the time to learn it. We would like to

>publicly honor the man who gave our children back their feet.

>

> We nominate Dr. Ponseti not as a small group of mothers who meet at the

>coffee shop with too much time on our hands - but as hundreds, if not

>thousands of mothers, and fathers, and grandparents, aunts and uncles and

>children young and old who have experienced clubfoot first hand, who have

>educated themselves, their friends and their neighbors, who have continued

>for years now the daunting task of speaking loudly that the world might

>finally listen and finally eliminate the primitive treatments still in use

>today on our young babies.

>

> We nominate Dr. Ponseti on behalf of the 45,000 (yes, forty-five thousand)

>babies who will be born in the U.S. over the next ten years who will suffer

>this birth defect.

>

> It's been close to sixty years. It's time this great American story is

>told to the world. It is time the world knew medical science has escaped

>the 1940's and moved in to the twenty-first century.

>

> He was an immigrant escaping the Spanish Civil War arriving in America the

>year we entered World War II. Now he is a 91 year old doctor who still

>walks to work each day to treat his tiniest of patients, because if not Dr.

>Ponseti, then who? The world must learn and new young doctors must move in

>to fill the shoes, to advance the method, to save the babies.

>

> We, the parents of children born with clubfoot implore you to explore the

>rich and colorful life of this silent American icon so he will not only get

>the recognition he deserves after half a century of service, but also so no

>other baby will have to endure the horrors of having their feet taken apart

>and put artificially back together unnecessarily.

>

> If nothing else happens from our attempt to honor Dr. Ponseti with the

>Lifetime Achievement Award, one very key thing has happened right before

>your very eyes: you, the reader, are now informed.

>

> We the parents of children born with clubfoot have reached one more

>person, who will, some day, tell two friends who will, someday, tell two

>friends. And thus, the Ponseti Method has survived for half a century one

>person at a time - and truly, that is probably the only reward Dr. Ponseti

>would ever ask for, that the word be spread, even if by only one mouth and

>one ear at a time. He doesn't want awards, he wants to see an end to the

>senseless brutality our trusted doctors are inflicting upon our tiniest of

>babies. Once that is accomplished, then, maybe then, he will finally feel

>it is safe for him to retire and pass his torch to the next generation

>trusting we will keep it burning.

>

>

>

>

>

> Summary and Contact Information:

>

> There are two forms of clubfeet. The first is relatively minor and known

>as Positional Clubfoot often due to a lack of amniotic fluid in the uterus

>cramping the baby's development. The second is Congenital Clubfeet, it is

>considered idiopathic, meaning doctors are not entirely sure what causes it

>, but suspect it caused by an unknown genetic factor coming in to play

>affecting the baby at approximately 20 weeks post conception. There also

>appears to be a slight inheritance factor involved as well, although not

>always. Because clubfoot is not present in the early weeks of development

>when most ultrasounds are performed, the condition is often not discovered

>until the child's birth.

> The Ponseti Method of Clubfoot correction is superior to the traditional

>method of treatment in that the baby's bones are gently persuaded to move in

>to their natural position through a process of systematic serial castings.

>No surgeries take place. No bones are cut, broken, or pinned back together.

>No muscles or tendons are stripped. No joints are penetrated. The method

>is completely non-intrusive. Done correctly the foot is allowed to continue

>its natural progression in to adulthood allowing these child to live normal,

>active lives.

> With correction performed properly by a qualified physician and with the

>parent's diligent and dedicated use of the FAB (Foot Abduction Brace),

>babies treated by the Ponseti Method enjoy a 95% success rate, i.e., 95% of

>the babies will never need a surgical attempt at correction.

>

> For more information about the clubfoot deformity, please contact the

>University of Iowa Clubfoot Clinic at (319)356-3469 or visit

>http://www.vh.org/pediatric/patient/orthopaedics/clubfeet/index.html for

>medical reports, articles, FAQ's, testimonials and photos. Parents or

>family members of a clubfooted baby are urged to join the nosurgery4clubfoot

>group at Yahoo! groups, nosurgery4clubfoot for advice and

>support.

>

>

>

> This Nomination is sent to you by the Parents of Children Born With

>Clubfoot and the children born with clubfoot who became the victims of

>misinformed doctors, as well as the children who have most blessedly been

>cured by the life's work of Dr. Ignacio Ponseti - and all the clubfooted

>babies yet to come.

>

> Signed and Sincerely,

>

> ee and Chriss Reese of Oklahoma

> - parents of two clubfooted sons, who remains somewhat crippled

>because we did not know yet about Dr. Ponseti, and Everett who enjoys

>perfect feet thanks to Dr. Ponseti.

> Harvey and June Reese of Oklahoma

> - parents of one clubfooted child, Mark, who remains with crippled feet

>because no one knew about the Ponseti Method.

> Leroy Reese of Oklahoma

> - father of one clubfooted son, Greg, who remains with crippled feet

>because no one knew about the Ponseti Method.

>

> Others add your names like this too and grow the list

>

>

>

>

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But if it doesn't hit the nail on the head we're aiming for, it needs amended so

it will! Those who can, please do!

s.

----- Original Message -----

,

I can't take credit for this, it was all ee -- I just started

writing something and she took it and ran with it, she wrote an

amazing essay!

allison

> this essay is absolutely wonderful! Thank you!

>

> Please add my name to the list

>

> Suzarrey mother to Diego born 3/24/05 with bc began

unsuccessful

> treatment with Dr. who claimed to use Ponseti but not trained.

Currently Diego is

> being treated by Ponseti and will continue treatment with a skilled

trained

> Ponseti Dr. Kent in Tucson, Az.

>

> Thank you for taking the time to put this together

>

> Kindly

>

>

>

>

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But if it doesn't hit the nail on the head we're aiming for, it needs amended so

it will! Those who can, please do!

s.

----- Original Message -----

,

I can't take credit for this, it was all ee -- I just started

writing something and she took it and ran with it, she wrote an

amazing essay!

allison

> this essay is absolutely wonderful! Thank you!

>

> Please add my name to the list

>

> Suzarrey mother to Diego born 3/24/05 with bc began

unsuccessful

> treatment with Dr. who claimed to use Ponseti but not trained.

Currently Diego is

> being treated by Ponseti and will continue treatment with a skilled

trained

> Ponseti Dr. Kent in Tucson, Az.

>

> Thank you for taking the time to put this together

>

> Kindly

>

>

>

>

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Hi, we held off on asking us to be added, incase you just wanted

everyone to e-mail the add me's to one e-mail, but it looks like your

just going to go through and gather possibly so we ask to also please

be added, and have a question. I went to the show site and when you

try to submit a wish, etc you have to have a photo to submit that is a

jpeg and under 100 somethings. What photo has everyone been using?

None of my photo's on my pc appear to be jpegs. Also if you would

rather all the add me's just be sent to one e-mail rather then someone

having to look for them, I would be more then happy to accept and

gather them for you. I will use a different e-mail address then usual

though, if you decide you would like me too (just to keep it less

confusing). Please let me know.

Michele and Yoder, Parents to 4 year old Collin, unilateral

right clubfoot. Began Ponseti method at age 2, with a Ponseti method

trained doctor.

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Hi, we held off on asking us to be added, incase you just wanted

everyone to e-mail the add me's to one e-mail, but it looks like your

just going to go through and gather possibly so we ask to also please

be added, and have a question. I went to the show site and when you

try to submit a wish, etc you have to have a photo to submit that is a

jpeg and under 100 somethings. What photo has everyone been using?

None of my photo's on my pc appear to be jpegs. Also if you would

rather all the add me's just be sent to one e-mail rather then someone

having to look for them, I would be more then happy to accept and

gather them for you. I will use a different e-mail address then usual

though, if you decide you would like me too (just to keep it less

confusing). Please let me know.

Michele and Yoder, Parents to 4 year old Collin, unilateral

right clubfoot. Began Ponseti method at age 2, with a Ponseti method

trained doctor.

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