Without the benefit of government grants or public funding, Dr. Collins, a practicing OB/GYN in New Roads, Louisiana, has spent his career studying the role played by umbilical cords in stillbirths. He has traveled, lectured, admonished and cajoled other members of the medical community, challenging them to put his research to the test. For the most part his pleas have fallen on deaf ears. A premature delivery is a cash bonanza for doctors and the hospital where the birth occurs, as they struggle to nurture it to viability, often a six month miracle costing a half million dollars or more. A stillbirth, on the other hand, is a potential lawsuit waiting to happen. No wonder so many in the medical community would like to just go on ignoring our dilemma. We are close to a breakthrough that will make it possible to cut the number of stillbirths by one half if we can come up with funding for expanded fetal heartbeat monitoring at home. The Internet has made such monitoring possible in real time. Dr. Collins has demonstrated real time home fetal heartbeat monitoring can spot incipient stillbirths before they progress to fetal demise. As with everything else, it will take money to expand the program to more high risk women. This is where you come in. We're not asking you for cash donations, though we would not turn them down, We only want a few minutes of your time. Almost 1,000 online marketers - from Dell to JC Penny - from Target Stores to The Wall Street Journal - have agreed to donate a portion of online purchases you make through their website to stillbirth. Amounts vary by vendor. Go Daddy, the world's largest Internet Registrar, will donate up to 8.8% of your purchases on their website to The National Stillbirth Society. Please click on the link below. It will take you to I-GIVE, the sponsor of the donation program. Register and download the "I-GIVE Shopping Window". The next time you shop online as you ordinarily would, if the merchant you visit is a participating I-GIVE member, The National Stillbirth Society will receive a percentage of your purchase. If you can get family members, friends and fellow employees to sign up too, you will succeed in raising hundreds of dollars for stillbirth research, without ever having to donate your own money. There is no charge to register at I-GIVE. There are no pop ups, spam or threats. It is a worry free site you can use to support stillbirth research automatically every time you visit an I-GIVE merchant member's website. With your help, by getting others to sign up at I-GIVE too, you can easily multiply the money you are able to raise for stillbirth. Please don't leave this page without signing up on I-GIVE as a participant. And be sure to download a copy the letter linked below to send to friends and family members to give them an opportunity to help conquer stillbirth too. In fact, you might want to consider sending it to everyone on your e-mail list. Let the world know that there is something they can do to help us conquer stillbirth. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER AT I-GIVE CLICK HERE FOR THE LETTER (PDF)
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