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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."
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."
Why not protest rat poison before research? I'm just guessing rat posion kills a hell of alot more rats than research.
>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.