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Thinner than average, with serious, shadowed eyes, Kevin Anderson, 36, has worked as a filmmaker for over 10 years. He’s traveled throughout Europe and the Americas producing web and sports videos, news packages and documentary shorts. In his infancy, he was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease, phenylketonuria (commonly referred to as PKU), where the body cannot properly break down protein. Throughout his life, he has taken medicine and followed a special low-protein diet, but other than these restrictions he enjoys a healthy life.

Recently, though, he “stumbled across this video that showed people with undiagnosed PKU.” While he had often heard stories about what would happen if he had never treated his condition, “I’d never seen pictures of it, I’d never encountered it myself, so it just wasn’t quite real to me,” he says. “And when I watched that video.… ” He trails off, choking up, pausing until the heartbreak passes. “It just captured me. I had the sudden realization I would have become mentally retarded; I would have been in an institution if it hadn’t been...