Slashdot Mirror
Regenerated Nerve Cells Let Rats Walk Again
SteamyMobile writes "Paralysis by spinal cord injuries through accidents must be one of the most horrible life-altering experiences imaginable, often affecting young, active people, and so far there has been no effective treatment of it. Researchers at the Miami School of Medicine have found a therapy involving regenerating nerve cells to cross the gap in the spinal cord. 70% of rats could walk again after the therapy. Hopefully this could benefit Christopher Reeves and thousands of others who have had their lives changed so much by spinal injuries."
i dont mean to nitpick but the gentlemans name is Reeve. no 's' on the end.
the site you linked to makes that pretty clear.
Just a heads-up on an error in the summary: the Wired articles states than (all) the rats which received the combination treatment regained 70% of their walking function, not that 70% of the injured rats became able to walk.
Given that the improvement was over a period of just eight weeks, this is possibly even more promising than the mangled statistic in the summary.
So what of us hideous, nerd-like beings? It's not a terrible thing simply because some pretty people ain't so pretty no mo. Common ./ editors, was that statement really so necessary?
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
"Moo, Moo. Moo Moo Moo Moo" (Translation: "Sorry, my bad.")
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
A rat can carry around a kilo when it is healthy. I would assume that these 70% rehabilitated lab rats can carry 700 grams. Assuming Chris has lost some weight since the fall and he now weighs 70 kilos, it will only take the combined effort of 100 of these rats for him to walk again!
Throw in one 'super rat' that tells the other rats what to do, and Segway has some serious competition...
This is far different from the stem cell research sung about. This is taking healthy Schwann cells from peripheral nerves which regrow which can be taken from the same animal. I don't see how there is really any ethical problem here.
Yet another signature that refers to itself. The irony and humor is dead.
He's talking about the ethics of crushing a rat's spinal cord in order to simulate the injury a human receives.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
"I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence."
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
The original research mentioned in the article was done in the hospital where I work, and I become very familiar with the material - I made the Flash-driven CD-ROM press release (first time I used Flash video) :-) . Since I come from a life sciences background, it didn't go whooshing over my head. Bottom line: this sort of treatment, if the patients are to have any chance of succeess, must be used within about 30 days of the injury occurring. Superman will not fly.
The treatment still hasn't been used to treat spinal cord damage in humans. Phase 1 trials (where they see if there are any negative effects from the treatment) were carried out in our hospital last year. It'll be a while before they move on to Phase 2.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
But then again he wiggled a toe and breathes on his own now so i might be wrong.
Why not protest rat poison before research? I'm just guessing rat posion kills a hell of alot more rats than research.
All the suffering of all the animals in the world is not worth the suffering of one human.
If there's a potential treatment for paraplegia that involves brutally torturing millions of cute puppies for their life-giving tears, I'm all for trying it out--and there will be no shortage of volunteers to recieve it. Let the people who don't want to be cured not be, it's their place to decide for their life alone. The rest of us would like to stop worrying about being able to walk, or worse, from some stupid accident.
This is really cool! I want a new body (mine isn't working properly) and this could be a mayor step forward towards a total body transplant! You know, put my bran into someone elses body and the grow the severed spinal cords together again.
-- Cheers!
I've so far had -1 troll, +1 interesting and -1 flamebait for the OP...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
If I could get out of this chair I would kick your ass up and down Main Street.
Does this treatment work in the brain as well? Can it help Bush?
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
You head down to the 'save the rats' protest first - i'll meet you there.
The check is in the mail, too.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The approach seems sound - the results look reasonable and believable and it is published in a top-tier journal. Noone overstates their claims and, at least to these jaded eyes, it truly looks like it could be developed into something of real therapeutic value.
/. - I wonder if there is a way to moderate stories up...?
It's a shame that a well-researched story be buried with all the sensationalist stuff. Being fairly new to
And only vegetarians should be able to complain about that. Getting a crushed spinal cord sounds preferrable to being butchered then eaten. Or is it because rats are cute? (I actually am a rat owner) Bacteria are alive to but you hardly ever hear people bitching about experiments on bacteria. Or cockroaches, or any ugly animal.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
>somebody had to cut the spinal cords of those rats in the first place for the experiments... and then they were killed to examine the results
Duh! They're RATS, not human beings. Without animal testing of drugs and surgical techniques, life would still be pretty damn medeival. If you want to go back to the days when people loved having hordes of rats in their dwellings and you got burned at the stake as a witch if you kept a cat, please do, but do it on some other continent from the one I live on.>Please remember this and ponder if the ends justify the means.
It is good to keep this in mind, and I strongly oppose cruelty to animals, but in the case of biomedical research, the ends absolutely justify the means.Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Rats can walk? Did I just wake up from a 100-year coma?
the ends absolutely justify the means
Why? What gives humans the right to exploit other species like this? Instead, they should experiment on our own species (e.g., the comatose, mentally retarded, etc.). The results would be more relevant, too.