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Bestselling True Crime Author Faces His Own Killer: Lou Gehrig’s

Philip Carlo discusses his part in a revolutionary treatment

NEW YORK, NY – Two-time New York Times best-selling author, Philip Carlo grew up in Brooklyn, amidst the world’s highest concentration of Mafia members. His intimate knowledge of their walk and their talk helped him become a successful crime writer. In fact, Carlo dedicated his professional life to unfolding the minds of America’s most dangerous criminals, going face-to-face with notorious serial killers and psychopaths like Richard Ramirez, who now sits on San Quentin’s Death Row for 13 murders, and Richard “The Ice Man” Kuklinski.

Today, Carlo faces his own killer: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s). There is no cure for the disease, but now there is treatment, offering ALS patients long-awaited hope.

Since he was diagnosed in the fall of 2005, Carlo has forgone his daily seven-mile runs – ALS has left him unable to walk. However, thanks to an innovative device implanted last month by Dr. Ray Onders, director of minimally invasive surgery and associate professor of surgery at University Hospital Case Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, Carlo’s added life expectancy may allow him to put the finishing touches on his next best-seller, due to hit shelves next year. Prior to the invention of the revolutionary device known as the NeuRx Pacer (Synapse Biomedical, Inc. Oberlin OH), the drug Rilutek was the only federally approved treatment for ALS and was only known to increase life by about three to six months.

Carlo received the NeuRx Pacer as the first patient of an FDA approved 100-patient trial designed to stimulate diaphragm muscles, freeing patients of ventilators and extending life as much as 15 to 20 months. NeuRx is a diaphragm pacing stimulation (DPS) system that electronically stimulates the muscles across the rib cage through electrodes that are implanted laparoscopically.

Initially pioneered for spinal cord patients, NeuRx is now being used to help ALS patients stave off respiratory complications during the progression of ALS. Dr. Onders, who successfully used the device in 2003 with the late Christopher Reeves to help decrease his dependence on the ventilator, says it will also level off the usual three percent decline in breathing per month caused by ALS and thereby delay the need for mechanical ventilators that would have to breathe for the patients. Patients with ALS also have significant problems with that affect their quality of life and the NeuRx pacer is now being used by patients to allow them to sleep more naturally using their own diaphragm.

“I have been approached by several families who thanked me for giving them hope,” said Dr. Onders after a recent talk in San Francisco to ALS patients and their families. “Although diaphragm pacing will not cure ALS, it will allow patients an opportunity to interact longer with their families and continue their activities so they may still be here when the breakthrough occurs.

An estimated 5,600 Americans are diagnosed every year with ALS, a muscle disorder caused by a nerve dysfunction. Most ALS patients will eventually require a ventilator when their diaphragm muscles weaken and cause the onset of breathing problems. Respirators are expensive to maintain, increase the risk of infection and restrict the patient’s independence – all issues the researchers addressed in developing a diaphragmatic pacing device for patients who wish to breathe without mechanical ventilators.

Visit www.clinicaltrials.gov for more information.

To schedule an interview with Dr. Onders or Philip Carlo about ALS and NeuRx, contact Stephanie Mayabb at (512) 478-2028 ext. 203 or smayabb@phenixpublicity.com.