Lewis Moody has ‘hope’ he can beat motor neurone illness

World Cup winner embarks on trial of new treatment and says his competitive spirit could help him combat a condition which claimed the lives of fellow rugby stars Doddie Weir and Rob Burrow

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Lewis Moody says he has ‘hope’ he can beat motor neurone disease after embarking on a trial of pioneering new treatment.

The 2003 World Cup winning rugby ace is undergoing revolutionary therapy in a bid to combat the effects of the degenerative nerve condition which causes muscle weakness, stiffness and paralysis.

It has claimed the lives of fellow rugby stars Rob Burrow and Doddie Weir, football manager Don Revie, actor David Niven, TV comic Ronnie Corbett and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking – and there are six new cases diagnosed every day in the UK.

Lewis, 47, who announced he has got it six months ago, will lead a 15-strong team of rugby union superstars, captains and players on a 500-mile bike ride across Britain to raise funds in the hope of finding a cure.

He admitted he had brought forward the marathon cycle to June 14 in the hope he will still be fit enough to take part.

Lewis said tackling MND may be like treating Aids – working out how to repress the symptoms rather than finding a cure.

But he told the Daily Star he hopes to harness his competitive spirit to win the race against time.

When he was first diagnosed he said it was ‘devastating’ because he was told there was ‘nothing you can do’ except ‘go from there and live your life’.

But since meeting Martin Turner, professor of clinical neurology and neuroscience, he has grown convinced he has ‘hope’.

Martin is carrying out pioneering research at the Oxford Motor Neuron (corr) Disease Centre to discover what causes it and how its progress can be slowed.

Lewis said: “The first noise I got about MND when I was first diagnosed was really negative so that was my only understanding of it from one conversation that I had.

“It was devastating, there is nothing you can do, just go from there and live your life. I was like, ‘what?’ Where’s the information? Where’s anything else other than negativity?

“Then a couple of weeks later I had a follow up conversation with another specialist Martin Turner, who operates out of Oxford, and that conversation was much different. He was really clear.

“The diagnosis didn’t change. But he was much more informative. He was really clear on everyone is unique and everyone’s journey is different. No-one knows what yours is going to be at the minute.

“He used the word ‘hope’ which I’ve found doctors and specialists very rarely use a term like that.

“So maybe in my exuberant, enthusiastic, energetic way I self heard the word ‘hope’ and sort of latched onto it.

“Since that moment you become slightly more aware of the realities of the science, the research and everything that’s going on.

“But there is genuine hope that a cure will be found.

“When we say ‘cure’, whether that’s like Aids and it’s about symptom repression, less so a complete cure. It will probably be a combination of things that gradually diminish it.”

Lewis said scientists have already made a breakthrough in tackling the genetic form of the condition which could lead to reversing symptoms.

But only 97% of sufferers do not have that strain.

“That is the bit that excites me that I can get my teeth stuck into,” he said.

“Maybe, being blunt for a while, it’s that old competitive fighting spirit that has languished away from the spotlight for a while.

“But this whole platform has given my teeth a little bit more sharpness and readiness to get stuck into this which I’m quite excited about. That hope comes from that space.

“There’s so much being done.

“There’s so many people applying for grants for various different things.

“I’m on a trial with Martin at Oxford which is a new way of looking at doing trials.

“Yes, there is hope.

“But hope is one thing. You need to turn hope into actions that lead to genuine outcomes and that is what people living with it want to see.”

For more information about Lewis’s fundraising effort visit https://uk.emma-live.com/LewisMoodyCycle and https://www.myname5doddie.co.uk/ .