As the sun rose over France on August 13, 2011, Knut Olstad was
looking forward to continuing his bicycle journey along the Tour
de France route. But by the end of the day, the vacation had
taken a terrible turn that would change his life. The 46-year-
old financial consultant from Norway doesn't remember much about
the accident that left him paralyzed from the chest down. He was
shown pictures of himself lying on the ground with a broken back
after being catapulted from his bike while trying to avoid a
collision with a car. After his initial recovery, Olstad
searched the Internet for information that might get him out of
the wheelchair he now uses to move around. This is how he found
a clinical trial conducted by StemCells Inc. at Balgrist
University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland. The company was
looking for 12 recently paralyzed patients for a study of its
product: purified human neural stems cells derived from donated
fetal brain tissue. The company was looking to see whether the
cells were safe to use an