Wednesday’s Budget might have been bad news for most of us, but it put a spring into the step of one young marathon runner.
Luke White is one of the hundred or so running in this weekend’s Tresco Marathon — the smallest marathon in the world — and took his fundraising bucket along on Thursday to a breakfast meeting at Truro College for Cornwall’s leading businessmen, who were being given a Budget briefing by Tresco Marathon sponsors Chartered Accountants Robinson Reed Layton.
The island race was established in 2000 when Pete Hingston, chef and father of 11-year-old CF sufferer Jade, was unable to get to London to take part in the capital’s famous marathon. Peter was so keen to run to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust that he decided to do a marathon on the same day around Tresco instead.
Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is the UK’s most common, life threatening inherited disease. It affects the lungs and digestive system and surprisingly 1 in 25 of the UK population carries the faulty CF gene. Average life expectancy is just 31 years and it is a deeply sad fact that three young lives are lost to CF every week.
The CF Trust funds medical and scientific research aimed at understanding, treating and finding a cure for CF, including groundbreaking research into gene therapy. Gene Therapy aims to replace the faulty gene in the lung cells with a healthy copy, thus preventing the long-term damage to the tissue of the lungs, which ultimately claims so many young lives.
The pilot study for clinical trials of gene therapy started last year, but it costs over £3.5 million each year to fund this work. Because of this, the possibility of an effective treatment has now become tantalisingly close, so by supporting the CF Trust you can make a very real contribution towards a better life for thousands of people.
Anyone wishing to sponsor Luke can do so online at www.justgiving.com/lukewhite
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