Fight for funds to help boys live longer

TO have one child whom doctors predict may just about survive to his 21st birthday is devastating, to have two is unimaginable.

Yet this is the unenviable situation John Gorman and his wife Anne Ebeling, from Celbridge, Co Kildare, find themselves in.

Their children, Lucas, 5, and Noah, 3, have been diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a progressive, debilitating, muscle-wasting disease where the average age of Irish survivors is in the range of 18-22, one of the shortest in Europe.