Changing Minds Foundation is a recently formed non-profit organization dedicated to improving the mental ability of persons with Down Syndrome - NOW -with available medical treatments and proper education. 

Message from Teresa Cody: 

Some are saying that we are moving too quickly but for decades we have been ignored and told to take our children home, love them and accept what we cannot change. Why should we do this? We refuse to accept this gloom and doom. Here we are in the decade of the brain when amazing advances are being made in our understanding in how the brain encodes and processes information. We learn daily that our brains are flexible and dynamic and can learn to recover from traumatic injury. So why should we accept that science and medicine can't provide clues and treatments for our children with Down syndrome.

I for one do not and have committed the last 10 years of my life to reading the medical and scientific literature to search for clues and strategies to help my son, Neal. This effort revealed that a combination of an herbal supplement and an off-label use of a drug for depression and an attention medicine are capable of opening my son's mind to the point where he can now speak, read and even learning abstract concepts in math. I have worked closely with doctors, psychologists, and teachers in my community to conduct a small study to explore whether this treatment might benefit other kids with Down syndrome. The results are amazing!!!

Now we are being told by the medical and research community, we are experimenting with our children and that we should be stopped. 

 I say we do not accept complacency. I say that our children can learn. I say that our children are worth it and deserve it.

I call for doctors and scientists to take up the cause and explore whether the protocol that we have developed can be used safely in carefully controlled clinical trials.

I call for more research to seek yet better treatments to help our kids.

To be fair there are many in the medical and science community that have heard our plea and are willing to take action. However, make no mistake. The battle is just beginning. For everyone willing to help, there is another who will say wait. Wait until we have figured everything out to the last detail.

I say we should rise up and give those with the vision and enterprise the support they need  to help our cause.

I say the time is now, not tomorrow.

Get involved! Take back our children's lives and future.