Stem Cells May Be Her Only Hope

For Ex-Racecar Driver's Daughter, Battle Is Personal

(CBS)  It was devastating news to her family.

"It should be me that's there, and it's just not fair to grab a little girl like this who's got her whole life in front of her," Al Unser. Jr. told 48 Hours in September 2000.

"When we were initially in it, I just thought … how does a mother, how does her family get through something like this?" says Cody's mom, Shelley Unser.

But, observes Kauffman, Cody refused to be defeated.

At 13, she started her own foundation, the Cody Unser First Step Foundation, and today, Cody fights hard for a cure, via embryonic stem cells.

"I think," she tells Kauffman, "stem cell research could help me by, you know, maybe one day making me walk, making me be able to put my feet on the sand and be able to feel, you know, what sand feels like again."

"Cody has had such an injury to her spinal cord that the only way we are going to rewire that spinal cord and to get her to walk is through the use of stem cells, and even specifically, embryonic stem cells," says embryonic stem cell researcher Dr. Douglas Kerr of Johns Hopkins University, who is Cody's physician.

Pointing to an image of magnified cells, he says, "This is simply a cluster of cells. There are no tissues. There's no organs. There's no beating heart."

Foes of stem cell research argue it uses cells that could become human beings.

Embryonic stem cells are valuable, Kauffman explains, because they hold the blueprint for every cell in the body. The hope for Cody is to direct these cells to become the neurons missing in her spine.

But Kerr's research has been stymied by federal restrictions.

"It's very frustrating to see this," he laments, "because, as a physician, I grieve with these patients."

Cody has spoken before Congress, urging it to lift curbs on embryonic stem cell research, saying, "Even though I may be paralyzed, my voice is not."

And she's met the president.

Gazing at a photo of Cody and Mr. Bush, Shelley said, "I look at this picture of her and the president, and I wonder what would he do if it was his daughter."