lost pics

any help would be welcome. i lost about 400 pics on a san disc card. local camera shops, down loadable recovery programs couldn't get the pics back. so i took the card to a data recovery specialist. they said the card was "burnt out", "100% non-recoverable". so i was wondering if anyone had come across a similar problem, or if anyone could point me in a different direction. don't want to give up hope. any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.