PEOPLE, NBC Offer Medical Miracles

By Stephen M. Silverman

07/27/2001 at 02:25 PM EDT

PEOPLE delivers five outstanding survivors of some recent medical miracles in its latest issue, and "Dateline NBC" will present their stories on Friday's edition of the news feature program. Among the tales is that of 2-year-old Tori Cameron, who was born with a rare, often disfiguring and sometimes deadly congenital skin disease, called epidermolysis bullosa. (Afflicting roughly 100,000 Americans, EB is caused by abnormalities in proteins that help hold skin together.) Tori had a serious form, so that even the slightest touch could cause blisters, which would bring on excruciating wounds. Her mother, Lorraine, sadly admitted to PEOPLE that she had serious questions about whether or not she wanted her daughter to live. Thankfully, it never came to that. Today, Tori roughhouses with the best of kids, with only a few blotchy skin patches as evidence of her illness. She owes her survival to devoted parents, a feisty spirit and Apilgraf, a revolutionary bioengineered skin derived from a seemingly unlikely source: the discarded foreskins of newly circumcised infants. Other survivors include Molly Koch, 23, who has a "bionic liver," and Vincent Montes, 29, who was saved by an intestine transplant. "Dateline NBC" airs at 9 p.m. et.