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Paralyzed Man Regains Hand Function After Breakthrough Nerve Rewiring Procedure
An anonymous reader writes "A 71-year-old man who became paralyzed from the waist down and lost all use of both hands in a 2008 car accident has regained motor function in his fingers after doctors rewired his nerves to bypass the damaged ones in a pioneering surgical procedure, according to a case study published on Tuesday."
Between this, the latest reports of restoring sigh with implantable photo voltaic chips and engineered nano particle drug delivery, medical science fiction is running out of subjects that are still fiction. Kurzweil's Singularity is looking more and more likely every day.
In the words of Glenn Reynolds ...... FASTER, PLEASE!!
-jon
Pretty amazing surgery, but watching the videos shows limited restoration of function. The key is getting the transplanted/regenerating nerves to make the proper connections. The surgery is not going to re-wire the incredible number of connections made during development. Neural prostheses currently offer better dexterity and restoration of function than the nerve transplant. However, it is likely only a matter of time (maybe sever decades) before the neural re-wiring problem is solved.
The human body never ceases to amaze in how flexible and adaptable it is. Amazing work by the doctors.
"The brain has to be trained to think, 'OK, I used to bend my elbow with this nerve, and now I use it to pinch' [...] it's more of a mental game that patients have to play with themselves."
I love imagining just how this would feel. Does the wiring ever become automatic and abstract in the same way that we normally come to experience motor movements(not thinking about pulling this muscle, relaxing that one, but just that we want to move our leg)? Or will he for the rest of his life feel like he is trying to move a specific forearm muscle group when he scratches his head?
Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.
Reposted and updated from http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8937&cid=613380 ...
When I had my cranial surgery (due to my locked jaw -- had to open my jaw -- it was so bad that I couldn't stick my tongue out), the doctors had to break some nerves to fix this (from my neck and right side of my head near the ear area).
After the complex surgery, the right side of my face were unresponsive (i.e. couldn't move and feel). That included my right eye where I couldn't move my eye lids (not even close fully).
After about two months, I went to another surgery to fix these damaged facial nerves. The doctors fixed this by connecting working nerves to the damaged ones. Basically, they were rerouting these signals as if you were rerouting a network.
Some of my broken nerves are currently recovered, but it will take years to recovered almost fully (not 100%).
You can read more old details from http://zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/surgery/surgery.html ...
--
5/15/2012: Nope, they never recovered fully. I still can't close my right eye lid fully and can feel a little more, but still can't move fully. The feelings still funky in other areas on my head/face/neck. Heh!
I wonder how much has improved from 1998 if I had that nerve reconstruction in 2010s.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
How is cloning gonna help anything? The problem isn't obtaining nerves, it's connecting them.
Think of it like this but at microscopic level, and with no labels on the cables to figure out what should be connected to what.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
A new procedure is a (usually) physical procedure on 1 single person who is consenting. If it goes wrong only 1 person is harmed (or not improving at least)
A new drug is something (bio)chemical of which the long term implications are more difficult to oversee. Aspirin is with us now since 1860 or so and still we find out new benefits and drawbacks of it. Further still, it is to be given as a treatment to a much larger set of individuals, so the potential harm done is therefore greater and thus needs more and rigorous testing before it can be deployed.
So I think (although I am not at all a medic) that therefore the consent of only the patient is enough if the applicable law's and Hipocratic oath is not broken in such matters.
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
I knew a guy who tempted fate and jumped into a swimming hole from a railway bridge. It was only about 20 feet down to the water, and the boulder was only 4 inches below its surface. He has use of part of the muscles in one shoulder (otherwise a quadriplegic). This would really help him. He isn't that old. Problem though: he was a dare devil before his accident. He wouldn't think twice of jumping into a Chevy truck with a 350 V8 engine, and hammer on the gas on an icy winter road, then stomp his foot on the emergency brake and see how many donuts he could do on the icy highway at 80 miles per hour. If he got this surgery, would he go back to his death defying ways, and would he kill himself, or worse, someone else, or worse, both himself and someone else if he gets this procedure?
Seriously, any time I hear of stuff like that, I think it's gotta suck for Christopher Reeve now.
"Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two" -- RFC 1925
That's good chin-rubbing reasoning. Should it rule the day, though?
How many people would die because drugs and procedures got onto the market too fast?
Compare that to how many die because good drugs get delayed by a year or two or five or ten.
I wouldn't be so quick to jump on the FDA-saves-lives bandwagon. They could turn out to be one of the biggest mass-murders, net, in all history.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
> Paralyzed Man Regains Hand Function After Breakthrough Nerve Rewiring Procedure
And, yes, "that" was the first thing he did.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The FDA is just an arm of the pharmaceutical companies. The majority of the people that work at the FDA either worked for the companies they regulate in the past, or will work for them after they leave the FDA. Just like most of the branches of our federal government they are corrupt through and through. Could they regulate effectively? Sure! Do they? no. Why don't they regulate "Supplements"? Why do they regulate so many rudimentary anti-inflammatory drugs that have no addictive properties at all? Why can I get enough Tylenol at a gas station to kill 10 people but my asthma inhaler I need a prescription for? Because the FDAs primary role is NOT to keep us safe. It's to keep the drug companies products scarce and drive up their price.
The adaptability of the nerve network in the human body really does amaze me. I'm glad to see that we're (as in humanity) making some steps toward resolving paralysis. The concept of being trapped in my own body has always been somewhat chilling to me.
Just another ignorant American.
I am not on any bandwagon. The above was just reasoning in a (I think) logical line. Of course the FDA has it's drawbacks and so does the NHF or any other system like it. Because it is a system. No system is without its errors.
I have some acquaintances that are physicians of some sort and this is the sort of line of thought I usually hear. So I thought that my answer would be sufficiently on-topic to answer the Parent.
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
Given how few drugs are meant to save lives, and most are just to make conditions bearable or alleviate temporary effects (and in most cases just to fix patient negligence that cause things like diabetes) I think more people would die due to lack of drug testing than from lack of the drugs in question.
The majority of the people that work at the FDA either worked for the companies they regulate in the past, or will work for them after they leave the FDA
Well, if I were running a drug comapny I would want someone who knows the ins and outs of the bureaucracy, and if I were running a regulatory agency I'd want to hire someone who knows the ins and outs of the industry.
Why don't they regulate "Supplements"?
Because the law doesn't allow them to. That's not the FDA's fault, that's your legislator's fault.
Why do they regulate so many rudimentary anti-inflammatory drugs that have no addictive properties at all?
Because too much aspirin or too much Naproxin Sodium can eat a hole in your intestine wall, and too much acetominaphin (which I don't know how to spell) can ruin your liver. A better question is why they're not regulating addictive drugs like alcohol and tobacco. Of course the reason is because they're regulated by the ATF (which I think should be abolished).
Why can I get enough Tylenol at a gas station to kill 10 people but my asthma inhaler I need a prescription for?
Because the asthma inhaler has steroids, and steroids can do a LOT of things to really fuck you up real good; for instance, steroid eyedrops will give you cataracts (I found this out when I was prescribed them for an eye infection and wound up getting cataract surgery in that eye as a result; it was the eye doctor that told me the steroids caused the cataract).
Get rid of the FDA and you're going to see a hell of a lot more worthless snake oil on the market, which is why the FDA was started in the first place.
Does the tinfoil hat work best shiny side in or shiny side out?
Free Martian Whores!
Because the asthma inhaler has steroids
I use an albuterol inhaler, and need a prescription to get it.
He's paralyzed from the waist down. Have a mercy, folks, and get his penis working first.
Of course obtaining nerves is a problem. To get them you have to take them from somewhere else. They have to disable one part of your body by removing a nerve connection to use it at another point. Granted the ability to walk is more important for most people than being able to say move your arm normally. But why should we have to compromise? I can tell you from experience that having one part of your body, even part of a limb not working right sucks like hell. And cloning removes the problem of rejection. And rejection would be a problem if they tried to use donor nerves (if it's even possible).
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
If they abolish the BATFE, who's going to give guns to the mexican drug cartels?
A little googling shows albuterol can be pretty dangerous, too.
Free Martian Whores!
I can see why steroids require a prescription (my grandfather died in his 40's because he was over medicated with cortisone). But the warnings for albuterol sound pretty much like the warnings for any OTC medication, and they're considered rare side effects, only listed to cover their asses.
"Rarely, this medication has caused severe (rarely fatal), sudden worsening of breathing problems/asthma etc...".
http://www.medicinenet.com/albuterol-inhalation_solution/article.htm