Jack Kessler chairs Northwestern University's Department of Neurology and Clinical Neurological Sciences, and when he takes the job his research is aimed at using stem cells against diabetes. That changes when his fifteen-year-old daughter Allison is paralyzed from the waist down in a skiing accident. Kessler redirects his lab toward embryonic stem cell research for spinal cord injury, and the film follows both his science and Allison's life afterward, using their intertwined stories to put a human face on a debate usually argued in the abstract. It tracks the practical and political obstacles facing embryonic stem cell work in the 2000s, including funding restrictions and public controversy, alongside the slower, uncertain progress inside the lab. Rather than resolving the ethical questions, the film sits with them: what it means to redirect a scientific career around a personal catastrophe, and what patients and families are actually waiting on while the research and the arguments continue. It aired as part of PBS's Independent Lens series.