A TEACHER spoke for the first time today about the pioneering transplant operation which saved his son's life.

Adam Turner, head of history at Moorland High School, Darwen, became one of the first in the world to undergo the stem cell transplant operation to save his son Isaac.

Pupils at the school were so touched by the story that they began raising money for the families of other people with the condition.

Isaac was born with MPS disease, a genetic condition which cripples its victims at an early age and destroys their internal organs. But Adam, 32, came to the rescue when a bone marrow transplant failed to save his son.

The stem cell transplant lifted vital elements from Adam's blood and transferred them to Isaac when he was two years old.

The therapy, carried out at Pendlebury Children's Hospital, Manchester, was the first transplant of its kind in Europe when it was carried out in July 2000.

Now aged four, Isaac can walk, talk and hear, and has even made his first trip to the Trafford Centre with his father.

And, despite a 25 per cent chance of Adam and his wife Louise's second baby inheriting MPS, a test at ten weeks revealed the disease has not passed on.

Adam said: "It wasn't a big ordeal to go through for my son, I would've chopped off my arm for him if it was necessary."

Isaac was born on November 23, 1998, and Adam and Louise, of Sale, Manchester, knew there was something wrong from the very beginning.

Adam said: "He was born in Hope Hospital, Manchester, and right from the start there were problems and he was in the special care baby unit for two weeks. He was diagnosed as being deaf and we thought it was just bad luck.

"When he was eight-months-old we noticed his head was growing at an unusual rate."

Isaac was then diagnosed as having water on the brain and following an appointment with a genetic specialist, Adam and Louise were told that their son was suffering from MPS, a disease which could kill him before his seventh birthday if no action was taken.

Adam said: "Without a bone marrow transplant we were told that his brain and vital organs would all deteriorate."

"In April 2000 an exact bone marrow match was found in an unborn baby in Belgium and doctors transported the umbilical cord to Pendlebury Hospital for the transplant. Adam and Louise found out six weeks later that the transplant had failed.

"In July the surgeons at the hospital said we would be ideal for a transplant, which was in its early stages at the time. I was hooked up to a machine for five hours and a lot of my blood was taken, filtered, and the stem cells fed to Isaac."

After ten days of gruelling chemotherapy to eradicate and Isaac's old immune system, the family returned home in August and were made to keep him in isolation for 18 months.

On hearing the family's plight in a school assembly, year 7 pupils raised £500 for the Buckinghamshire-based MPS Society, which was formed in 1982 and aims to help more than 1,000 children in the UK.who suffer with the disease.