By SYLVIA JEFFREYS
Locky Auden’s grin is so bright, it’s infectious. He is seven years old, he barracks for Hawthorne, and he recently lost his two front teeth.
Locky’s smile has beamed around the world in recent days, encouraging friends, relatives and strangers – the more the merrier – to help his family.
His Dad, Nick, has stage four melanoma, which has long been considered incurable – practically a death sentence – until recently.
American scientists have developed a breakthrough drug, known as Anti PD-1. Developer Merck is running trials with a handful of patients in Australia, and those trials are a long way off being complete.
However, an early trial in the United States of 135 patients with advanced melanoma showed the drug was able to shrink tumours in at least 38% of cases.
Nick is from Melbourne, but moved with his wife and children to Denver in the United States in 2011. He is fighting to be included in a trial on compassionate grounds.
He has been gathering signatures on a petition, and in a little over a week more than 25,000 people have pledged their support, including comedians Sarah Silverman and Ricky Gervais.
Anyway, enough from me. I’ll let Locky do the talking. He does such a beautiful job of it, after all.
Watch here:
To sign Locky’s petition, visit: http://www.savelockysdad.com/
Top Comments
I used to work with Nick and have met his wife and kids, they are a lovely family. Please sign and share www.savelockysdad.com
Signatures are now over 210,000 but I think 1,000,000 will be the most powerful message we can send Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb :)
Petition figures now well over 100,000 and counting. Thanks for supporting #savelockysdad x