Chair Doesn't Stop Good Pool Cue Beating

A man whose wheelchair didn't stop him from beating a lingerie bar patron over the head with a pool cue is one of three people facing prison time in the incident.

Two men are accused of beating three patrons of a Huntington Beach lingerie bar, and a bartender has been charged as an accessory.

The Filling Post is located on Beach Boulevard near Heil Avenue. A fight involving pool cues broke out Sept. 15 at the lingerie bar.

On Sept. 15, two men brought a bartender at a Huntington Beach lingerie bar a change of clothes after a "wardrobe malfunction." They stayed and and ended up attacking three patrons, prosecutors charge.

Armando Correa Gonzales had a hearing in the case Friday. He pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon in December over the incident and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Melissa Gasco, 29, the bartender, has pleaded not guilty to accessory after the fact.

The Huntington Beach police did not return repeated calls about the identity of the other attacker, referred to as John Doe in court records.

Around 10:50 p.m., Gonzales and another man went to the Filling Post Pub on Beach Boulevard to bring clothes to Gasco, who had "some sort of wardrobe malfunction," according to a search warrant served by the Huntington Beach police.

One of the men went up to bar patron Mark Towers, 56, and asked, "Why are you looking at me?"

Towers said he wasn't, and that he was just watching a baseball game. He looked away and then felt a sharp blow to the back of his head. The man hit him "two or three" more times with a pool cue, and he collapsed.

Larry Brown, 46, was with Towers watching the game and was also beaten, causing redness and swelling to the right side of his face.

Michael Garnica, 52, had been sitting at the bar talking with other patrons. When he turned to see the attack, the second man rolled up in a wheelchair and hit him the face with a pool cue.

Garnica had a cut over his right eye and a cut on the back of his head that required stitches. The attack, police said, "was clearly captured on surveillance footage and all appeared unprovoked an extremely violent."

Chair Doesn't Let Model Get in the Way

Curvaceous is now ‘in.’ Take V Magazine’s recent “Size Issue” for example. In their revolutionary “Curves Ahead” spread, the magazine displayed full-bodied women adorning glamorous jewellery, shoes and swimwear. For the first time, thicker and softer was being accepted in the fashion world, well at least, in the form of marketing.

But today London department store Debenhams became the first UK retailer to use a disabled model in a photo campaign to advertise a range by British designer Ben de Lisi. Shannon Murray, 32, and her wheelchair can be seen in several shop windows alongside Kate Fullman, a size 14 model, Tess Montgomery, a petite model and Tokumbo Daniel, a size 8 model.

Murray has been confined to her wheelchair since she broke her neck as a teenager. But with this new campaign, she won’t be confined from the public eye much longer.

“We cater for women of all shapes and sizes, young and old, non-disabled and disabled so we wanted our windows to reflect this choice,” Michael Sharp, Debenhams’ Deputy Chief Executive said.

The Cure to Spinal Cord Injury

Researchers at UTHealth have demonstrated in rats that transplanting genetically modified adult stem cells into an injured spinal cord can help restore the electrical pathways associated with movement. The results are published in the Feb. 24 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

In spinal cord injury, demyelination, or the destruction of the myelin sheath in the central nervous system, occurs. The myelin sheath, produced by cells called oligodendrocytes, wraps around the axons of nerves and helps speed activity and insulate electrical conduction. Without it, the nerves cannot send messages to make muscles move.

The research team, led by Qilin Cao, M.D., principal investigator and associate professor of neurosurgery at UTHealth (The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston), discovered that transplanted adult stem cells (oligodendrocyte precursor cells or OPC) from the spinal cord could become oligodendrocytes. The new cells helped restore electrical pathways of the spinal cord and therefore, function, in a process called remyelination.

Cao said two important discoveries were isolating precursor cells from the adult spinal cord and, prior to transplanting them into the spinal cord, genetically modifying them to express ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF), a protein that encourages nerve growth. In preliminary experiments, also published in this paper, CNTF was shown to facilitate survival and differentiation of OPCs in cell culture.

"Most importantly, the evidence of remyelination was shown to exactly coincide with the anatomical localization of these motor pathways in spinal cord white matter," Cao said. "These latter data provide confidence that the mechanism by which the grafted OPCs are enhancing functional recovery is through remyelination."

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Woman Burned Alive after Power Chair Ignites in Flames

A civil lawsuit has been filed in connection to a fire death last year at a Bastrop apartment for seniors.

On Sept. 13, a fire claimed the life of Merrimac Ellis, 87, a resident of the Bond House Apartment Complex at 720 Brisco St. Firefighters found Ellis trapped in her powered wheelchair, alive but badly burned, and she died en route to the hospital.

Merrimac Ellis' son, James Ellis, is seeking damages from Bond House, the insurance company underwriting the apartment and the respective manufacturers of Ellis' wheelchair, the apartment's sprinkler system and the fire alarm system.

The petition for damages, which represents only the plaintiff's side in a lawsuit, claims the apartment and its management neglected the safety of its residents, and the manufacturers provided faulty products that were dangerous and ultimately lethal.

"In its investigation, the State of Louisiana Fire Marshal observed bloody fingerprints under the sink when the fire consumed her," the petition reads. "These bloody fingerprints are indication of Ms. Ellis' valiant, yet unsuccessful, attempts to free herself from the burning chair to save her life."

The petition goes on to say subsequent investigations indicated the fire started under the seat of the wheelchair, and Invacare Corp., the world's largest maker of battery-operated wheelchairs, had issued recalls in the past for short-circuiting chairs that ignited and burned or killed their occupants.

After the fire started, the sprinkler system never initiated and the fire alarm never sounded. The petition faults the sprinkler company, Delta Fire Protection Systems Inc., for failing to maintain sprinkler heads, and Vantronics Security System of Monroe, Inc., for failing to maintain an audible alarm. It also faults Samella Anderson, the manager for Bond House, and Bond House itself for allowing the "unreasonably dangerous conditions" to go undiscovered and unresolved.

After his office concluded its investigation, State Fire Marshal Butch Browning said while investigators found no problems with the sprinkler head in Ellis' room, his office did have concerns about the sprinkler system throughout the building.



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SF Bus Ejects Wheelchair Man and Creates Geyser

SAN FRANCISCO — A bizarre chain of events left two people injured and a San Francisco neighborhood soaking wet when a city bus struck a fire hydrant.

It all began Sunday evening when a Muni rider was getting off a bus using its extended wheelchair lift. Muni spokesman Judson True says the customer fell from the lift and was taken to the hospital with unknown injuries.

As the incident was being sorted out, the bus rolled forward and the wheelchair lift sheared off a fire hydrant, sending water gushing into the air three stories high. True says the hydrant struck a Muni inspector, who was treated for minor injuries at the scene.

Water from the hydrant flooded a building on the corner of Fillmore and Haight streets.

True says the bus driver has been placed on non-driving status as officials investigate the incident.

Run-Away Toyota Causes Spinal Cord Injury

A man from Louisville, Kentucky, crashed his 2010 Toyota Camry on January 29. A sticking accelerator pedal reportedly caused the crash, according to a Wave3 News article. Toyota recalled eight of its 2010 car models two weeks ago as the first step in solving this manufacturing defect, which has allegedly been causing sudden unintended acceleration.

The Kentucky man involved in the crash, identified as Todd Allen, had not heard anything about the recall before driving on the day of his accident, a Justice News Flash piece reported.

When Allen arrived at the hospital, he was alleged to have lost sensation in his legs. Emergency medical personnel suspected he might have suffered a spinal cord injury in the accident. Four people were in the Toyota Camry when the driver, Allen, was attempting to pull into a parking spot. The Wave3 report said that the accelerator pedal allegedly stuck, forcing the car to quickly accelerate, leading to the crash and subsequent injuries.

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SCI Skiing

On Feb. 4, Life Rolls On (LRO) will trade surfboards for monoskis as the organization hosts its 2nd Annual They Will Ski Again event at Bear Mountain in Big Bear Lake, Calif. With varying degrees of mobility, individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) will be treated to an exciting day on the slopes with expert instruction provided by Bear Mountain's adaptive ski instructors.

"LRO utilizes action sports as a platform for showing what is possible despite spinal cord injury," said Meghan Schinderle, Program Director for Life Rolls On. "We are thrilled to once again adapt snowboarding and skiing for our incredible participants who are eager and ready to hit the slopes, some, for the very first time since their injury."

Life Rolls On is best-known for its award-winning adaptive surfing program, They Will Surf Again, through which paraplegics and quadriplegics experience the joy of catching a wave with the assistance of adaptive equipment and dedicated volunteers. Similar to They Will Surf Again, this program empowers individuals with SCI to participate in a sport they enjoyed prior to injury and serves as an opportunity to introduce others to the sport for the first time.

Participants will enjoy this amazing experience at no-cost thanks to generous support from sponsors Bear Mountain, BJ's Restaurant Foundation, and Tonic Hair Care.

But Can He Talk and Drive the Chair at the Same Time?

Spinal cord injury patient Cruise Bogle controls mobility with tongue

Skimboarding in Florida ended sadly for Cruise Bogle when a wave whipped his board out from under him and sent him crashing into the ocean floor, breaking his neck. Since then, Bogle has been paralyzed from the neck down, but new technology promises to restore some of his movement.

During his stay at a hospital in Atlanta, the man was tapped to test a new wheelchair developed by engineers from the Georgia Institute of Technology. It is powered by the patient's tongue because that organ is connected to the brain directly, rather than through the spinal cord, and so remains functional even in quadriplegics, according to CNN.

Bogle's tongue was fitted with a small magnet that works like a mouse pad, with the tongue as the cursor. Moving the tongue forward sends a wireless signal to sensors in a special headset that causes the wheelchair to move forward, while moving the tongue back causes the opposite movement.

"It was awkward at first to control a wheelchair with my tongue, but it got easier as I went on," the 20-year-old told the news provider, adding that the technology is "amazing."

According to the Travis Roy Foundation, which is dedicated to spinal cord injury research, between 250,000 - 400,000 Americans are living with this type of injury and more than 13,000 new cases are reported each year.

The Mayo Clinic suggests that individuals may reduce their risk of a spinal cord injury by driving safely, exercising caution around firearms, preventing falls, and taking precautions when playing sports.

Another organization that can help survivors live thriving lives despite their disability is the National Spinal Cord Injury Association.

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First U.S. Stem Cells Transplanted into Spinal Cord

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- For the first time in the United States, stem cells have been directly injected into the spinal cord of a patient, researchers announced Thursday.

Doctors injected stem cells from 8-week-old fetal tissue into the spine of a man in his early 60s who has advanced ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It was part of a clinical trial designed to determine whether it is safe to inject stem cells into the spinal cord and whether the cells themselves are safe.

ALS is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that causes the deterioration of specific nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord called motor neurons, which control muscle movement. About 30,000 Americans have ALS at any given time, according to the ALS Association.

There is no cure for ALS, which is better known as Lou Gehrig's disease, named after the New York Yankees' first baseman and Hall of Famer who retired from baseball in the 1930s after being diagnosed with the disease.

As the illness progresses, patients lose their ability to walk, talk and breathe. Patients usually die within two to five years of diagnosis, according the ALS Association.

Neuralstem Inc., a Rockville, Maryland-based biotech company, received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct the clinical trial in September. The company is fully funding the research and provides the stem cells that are being injected into the patients.

Neuralstem announced the start of the clinical trial in a news release Thursday.

Longtime ALS researcher and University of Michigan neurologist Dr. Eva Feldman is overseeing the first human clinical trial of a stem cell treatment in ALS patients.

"We are entering a new era of cell therapeutics for ALS, and in my opinion, it is an new era of hope for patients with ALS," Feldman said.

At least 12 patients are expected to participate in this early research. They are to receive the stem cell transplants at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

"This is the first study to see if the invasive injection into the spinal cord is safe for the patient," said Lucie Bruijn, science director of the ALS Association.

This first patient in the clinical trial received several injections of stem cells into the lumbar region of the spinal cord, the area that controls leg function, because most ALS patients first lose muscle function in their legs, according to Karl Johe, Neuralstem's chairman and chief scientific officer.

Bruijn says there have been a few other occasions outside the United States in which fetal stem cells have been injected into a patient, "but not necessarily using a very [rigorous] trial design." She adds that there were also a couple of small studies in Italy that injected other types of stem cells into a few patients but that this is the first FDA-approved trial in the United States.

"Our biggest hope for stem cells is to significantly slow the progression the disease," Bruijn said.

The ALS Association is not providing funding for this clinical trial, but it has supported the work of Dr. Nick Boulis, the Emory neurosurgeon who developed the surgical technique used to inject the stem cells.

Johe invented the technology that allows the company to manufacture billions of copies of stem cells that are taken from a single source of spinal cord cells: cells that were extracted from fetal tissue, which was donated to the company.

"The cells are human neural stem cells," Johe said, acknowledging that the introduction of stem cells is a very invasive procedure.

"What we are attempting is a novel approach by directly injecting them into the middle of the spinal cord, which to our knowledge has never been done before," Johe said.

Researchers plan to follow this and future patients participating in this trial for a long time to determine the safety of the procedure.

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Experts: Sitting Too Much Could be Deadly

Here's a new warning from health experts: Sitting is deadly.

Scientists are increasingly warning that sitting for prolonged periods — even if you also exercise regularly — could be bad for your health. And it doesn't matter where the sitting takes place — at the office, at school, in the car or before a computer or TV — just the overall number of hours it occurs.

Research is preliminary, but several studies suggest people who spend most of their days sitting are more likely to be fat, have a heart attack or even die.

In an editorial published this week in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Elin Ekblom-Bak of the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences suggested that authorities rethink how they define physical activity to highlight the dangers of sitting.

While health officials have issued guidelines recommending minimum amounts of physical activity, they haven't suggested people try to limit how much time they spend in a seated position.

"After four hours of sitting, the body starts to send harmful signals," Ekblom-Bak said. She explained that genes regulating the amount of glucose and fat in the body start to shut down.

Even for people who exercise, spending long stretches of time sitting at a desk is still harmful. Tim Armstrong, a physical activity expert at the World Health Organization, said people who exercise every day — but still spend a lot of time sitting — might get more benefit if that exercise were spread across the day, rather than in a single bout.

That wasn't welcome news for Aytekin Can, 31, who works at a London financial company, and spends most of his days sitting in front of a computer. Several evenings a week, Can also teaches jiu jitsu, a Japanese martial art involving wrestling, and also does Thai boxing.

"I'm sure there are some detrimental effects of staying still for too long, but I hope that being active when I can helps," he said. "I wouldn't want to think the sitting could be that dangerous."

Still, in a study published last year that tracked more than 17,000 Canadians for about a dozen years, researchers found people who sat more had a higher death risk, independently of whether or not they exercised.

"We don't have enough evidence yet to say how much sitting is bad," said Peter Katzmarzyk of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, who led the Canadian study. "But it seems the more you can get up and interrupt this sedentary behavior, the better."

Figures from a U.S. survey in 2003-2004 found Americans spend more than half their time sitting, from working at their desks to sitting in cars.

Experts said more research is needed to figure out just how much sitting is dangerous, and what might be possible to offset those effects.

"People should keep exercising because that has a lot of benefits," Ekblom-Bak said. "But when they're in the office, they should try to interrupt sitting as often as possible," she said. "Don't just send your colleague an e-mail. Walk over and talk to him. Standing up."

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Underwater Treadmill Proves Rehab Benefit

Physical therapist Sandra Stevens first explored the use of underwater treadmills at Middle Tennessee State University with children suffering from cerebral palsy. She hypothesized that the underwater system might also have profound benefits for spinal cord injury patients struggling to relearn how to walk and move. Stevens noted dramatic improvement in endurance in patients who used the treadmills as part of their rehabilitation program. She said, “So they’ve gone from four or five minutes of walking to 32 or 34 minutes. That’s a big improvement,” in a DNA India article.
Stevens’ research has already helped a handful of spinal cord injury survivors to relearn to walk after suffering from full or partial paralysis. A Newswise article reported on the cases of three of Stevens’ patients: Jim Harris, Bob Moody, and Janette Rodgers; all three of them have relearned how to walk with the help of underwater treadmills.

Harris survived a plane crash, Moody fell and became paralyzed two years ago, and Rodgers broke her neck in a car accident in mid-2009. The Newswise article reported, “For spinal-cord injuries, walking in water is the ideal place because people with this particular injury have a blunted cardiovascular response to any exercise, Stevens explained. Walking in water produces greater blood flow, which increases cardiovascular activity, she said.”

Since the use of underwater treadmills does not require any kind of FDA approval, the rehabilitation method has witnessed a rapid gain in popularity in various and sometimes-strange places around the U.S. A basketball player for Ohio State University was able to recover and return to play after a fall left him with broken bones in his back. Yahoo Sports reported that Evan Turner missed just six games while recovering from his injury. “Turner said he spent 30-40 minutes each day in the pool running on an underwater treadmill. His body responded well enough that he stopped taking painkillers earlier than expected,” the article noted.

A basketball training facility in Mississippi is being completed this year with an underwater treadmill for athletes to use while recovering from minor to more serious injuries. A state of the art rehabilitation center in Wyoming has plans to include an underwater treadmill as part of their new expanding facility.

Another article reported that even some high-tech veterinarian facilities provide shallow underwater treadmills for obese dogs to use for moving safely and losing weight. The method holds tremendous promise for spinal cord injury survivors around the world. Because the method is relatively inexpensive, it is likely that more and more training and rehabilitation facilities will provide underwater treadmills as an effective and viable option for their patients.

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Music Loses a Legend, SCI Loses another Hero

Teddy Pendergrass, one of R&Bs favorite sons, and a superstar of the 1970s and 1980s, sings his way home.

It's 1972 and there's a crackling fire in the fireplace, some Lancer's on the table, and smooth, soulful sounds are pouring out of the radio. You can bet it's Teddy Pendergrass whose voice is behind it.

But the voice and the man are both silent now as Pendergrass, 59, succumbed to a prolonged illness on Wednesday night in Philadelphia, Pa., where the Grammy-winner had been hospitalized since August.

How many babies were made to his brand of R&B featuring his strong, stirring and sexy style?

A lot.

Considering that his voice was on 10 consecutive platinum-selling albums, his appeal crossed racial lines and his triumph over tragedy following a car accident in 1982 which left him a paraplegic, brought Pendergrass worldwide acclaim.

His activism with the Teddy Pendergrass Alliance, which formed a partnership with the National Spinal Cord
Injury Association, has helped others in their recovery from spinal cord injuries.

Some of his most famous No.1 hits included: "Close the Door," "Turn Off the Lights," "I Don't Love You Anymore" and "Love T.K.O.," which helped earn him five Grammy nominations, as his raw sensuality  and sex appeal created Beatles-level hysteria.

"Teddy Pendergrass was one of the greatest artists that the music industry has ever known, and there hasn't been another one since. We've lost our voice and we've lost our best friend, but we're thankful for what we had. It was beautiful. He was one of the best," said producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, who worked with their friend in bringing soul music from Philadelphia ("The Sound of Philadelphia") to the world.

The man might be gone, but his voice will live on, insuring that he will never be forgotten.

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Alas, Wheelchair Bandit Subdued by Robot

Heart of a Dragon: Coming to a Theatre Near You This Summer

“Heart of a Dragon” is based on the true story of Rick Hansen. At age 16, Hansen sustained a spinal cord injury and would never walk again. The film chronicles his two-year journey, The Man in Motion World Tour, which took him across 34 countries in four continents, to raise funds for spinal cord injury research.

The movie, with an official release scheduled for this summer, will be screened at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Carmike Cinemas. Tickets are $10 and are available in advance through the disAbility Resource Center. Call 815-6618 or stop by the dRC, 140-A Cinema Drive, between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.



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Official Site...

Travel in Wheelchair to China , Walk Home

Chinese researchers have become the world's fifth most prolific contributors to peer-reviewed scientific literature on clock-reversing regenerative medicine even as a skeptical international research community condemns the practice of Chinese clinics administering unproven stem cell therapies to domestic and foreign patients.

According to a study by the Canadian-based McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health (MRC), published today by the UK journal Regenerative Medicine, China's government is pouring dollars generously into regenerative medicine (RM) research and aggressively recruiting high-calibre scientists trained abroad in pursuit of its ambition to become a world leader in the field.

And its strategy is working: Chinese contributions to scientific journals on RM topics leapt from 37 in year 2000 to 1,116 in 2008, exceeded only by the contributions of experts in the USA, Germany, Japan and the UK.

The accomplishment is all the more astonishing given that China's international credibility has been and still is severely hindered by global concerns surrounding Chinese clinics, where unproven therapies continue to be administered to thousands of patients.

New rules to govern such treatments were recently instituted but need to be strictly enforced in order to repair China's global reputation, according to MRC authors Dominique S. McMahon, Halla Thorsteinsdóttir, Peter A. Singer and Abdallah S. Daar.

They drew their conclusions after having gained unprecedented access to almost 50 Chinese researchers, policy makers, clinicians, company executives and regulators for interviews. The research was made possible by funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

"When you look at the issue of stem cells in China, you see the Yin-Yang of a scientific powerhouse mixed with controversial clinical application of stem cell therapies," says Dr. Singer, MRC's Director. "The overall picture at the moment is ambiguous but in the future, given the measures that have been put in place, the science can be expected to rise and the controversy to fall."

Regenerative medicine an interdisciplinary field of research and clinical applications focused on the repair, replacement or regeneration of cells, tissues or organs to restore impaired function resulting from any cause, including congenital defects, disease, trauma and aging. It uses a combination of several converging technological approaches, both existing and newly emerging, that moves it beyond traditional transplantation and replacement therapies. The approaches often stimulate and support the body's own self-healing capacity. These approaches may include the use of soluble molecules, gene therapy, stem cell transplants, tissue engineering, and the reprogramming of cell and tissue types.

MRC researchers report that until May 2009 clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of stem cell therapies were not required. Now proof of safety and efficacy through clinical trials is required by China's Ministry of Health for all stem cell and gene therapies.

The change was made after international experts, joined by top Chinese researchers, protested that treatment centers were acting "against commonly accepted principles of modern scientific research" and successfully called on China to regulate new treatments and ensure patient safety.

Despite the new rules, however, stem cell treatments are still available at over 200 hospitals across China to patients of diseases such as ataxia, Lou Gehrig's disease, traumatic brain and spinal cord injury, diabetes, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, autism, cerebral palsy, stroke, optic nerve hypoplasia and many others.

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2010 Will Be The Year of Regeneration

While the newswires crackle with Dick Cheney's latest display of cowardice and Sarah Palin's victimhood, the most important event of 2010 will hardly be mentioned: the dawn of the age of regenerative medicine, a new era for healthcare, and an even greater imperative for healthcare reform.

Sometime this year, ophthalmologists in the United Kingdom--where, we might recall, CT-scanners, MRI-scanners, and monoclonal antibodies were 'invented'--will inject human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) into the retina of a patient suffering macular degeneration, a leading cause of near-blindness in the elderly. Currently, there are nearly 2 million people in the US with the disease, expected to grow to 3 million in just 10 years.

Studies with hESCs in an animal model of the disease have shown improved vision. When the first patient from the UK study demonstrates improved vision, the era of regenerative medicine will have been launched. Oh, yes, by the way, the UK also 'invented' in vitro fertilization, now a routine procedure worldwide, and from which the source--frozen embryos that are to be discarded--of the hESCs arises.

Of course, the UK need not have been first with hESC therapy, except that the US was saddled for 8 years with George Bush and for 6 of those years with the radical rightwing Republican Congress who not only divined that hESCs derived after a certain date in August 2001 were ungodly, but (and here is where the Republican Congress shone so brightly) passed two bills in the House making all hESC research illegal and authorizing the arrest of any US citizen who traveled abroad for hESC treatment. Just a wonderful crowd, weren't they? And, so focused on terrorism, weren't they? [Anyone who wants to remove the filibuster from the US Senate ought to consider what would have happened had the Republican Senate that had more than 50 votes, had blessed us with similar divine guidance].

Also this year, in the United States, patients with spinal cord injuries that would destine them for lives in wheelchairs will receive an injection of hESCs into their injured spinal cords. Studies of hESCs in animal models of spinal cord injury have shown remarkable recovery of function. When the first of these human patients wiggles his toes, the prospect of fulfilling Christopher Reeve's vision of walking again will become closer to reality--unfortunately, the hypocritical radical religio-politics of the "naughts" helped delay it so that Christopher himself could not live to experience it.

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Deer Stands - Easy Path to Spinal Cord Injury

Hunters between the ages of 15 and 34 years old are the most likely to suffer serious injuries in tree stand-related incidents, according to researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Center for Injury Sciences.

In a study, presented online in the Journal of Trauma Injury, Infection and Critical Care, the researchers also reported that men were twice as likely as women to be injured in a hunting accident.

They collected data from the 2000-2007 National Electronic Injury Surveillance System established by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The researchers reported that the number of Americans engaging in hunting has remained stable over the past decade, with 12.5 million hunters registered in 2006.

That same data noted that there were 46,860 reported injuries related to tree stand use between 2000 and 2007.

The most common injuries, the study reported, were fractures – most likely to occur in the hip or lower extremities. Injuries to the trunk, shoulder and upper extremities were less common. Head and spinal cord injuries were even less common, but still frequent enough to be considered significant.

Hunters between the ages of 15 and 24 years old had injury rates of 55.7 per 100,000, and those aged 25 to 34 years old averaged 61 injuries per 100,000. Hunters over 65 years of age had injury rates of only 22.4 per 100,000.

“The elevated injury rate among younger hunters is significant, because debilitating injuries in younger people are far more devastating than for older individuals because of the potential long-term effects that create both physical and financial hardships for patients and their families,” Gerald McGwin, Jr., MS, PhD, associate director for research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Center for Injury Sciences and senior investigator for the study, stated in a press release.

Younger hunters, McGwin stated, may have higher injury rates due to a willingness to take risks. Additionally, they may have less exposure to safety information and spend more time hunting than older hunters.

Safety campaigns that recommend the use of safety harnesses and the regular maintenance of tree stands could aid in preventing future injuries, he concluded.

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A Life Worth Living

For me, this time of year, as for so many others, is a time of reflection of the passed year, and what is to lie ahead. And while a surge of emotions hits me all at once, like a typhoon, I feel nothing, literally. I am paralyzed, by traditional medical definition. I have been paralyzed for seven years now, from a pool diving accident, and although that in and of itself was enough to catapult me into a deep, severe depression for years, it somehow left me and my personality intact, unscathed. What's most interesting about this is that the very second I snapped my spine into hundreds of shards, severing my spinal cord, I knew I'd be okay. I just knew it. It would be difficult and it would be hard, but there was this inner voice that told me, reassuringly, I'd come out on the other side actually better than before.

Most of what I've learned from my experience, from aging, and from questioning and meeting others is that there is no set way in leading and being happy in life being happy in life. The basis of it needs to stand on a firm ground, which is living my life according to my beliefs and making sure that that core is unshakable. But to get to this point was too difficult at times. To be told numerous times I'd probably die in a six hour span, then to wake up days later in an intensive care unit unable to feel or move 95 percent of my body, breathing with a large plastic tube in my throat, surrounded and attached to numerous medical devices I'd only presume would be life support, made me think it would be easier to die at times. But I didn't. I lived. Dying was a passing thought. But there was a lot of time to think about other more difficult questions: what is the point of my life, and what will make me live a happy life?

The three years following my injury were a blur. I didn't feel human, and in a sense, I hated myself. I couldn't look in a mirror, not even gaze out of a window, fearing the reflection of myself sitting in a wheelchair would be enough to propel me into a downward spiral of negative thought and unending tears. I felt like an idiot, not being able to drink a glass of water on my own, go to the bathroom alone, almost everything had to be assisted. I didn't take showers. I didn't get haircuts -- I'd shave my head bald. I wore the same paper hospital pants everyday, and the same ratty shirt for three years. I wanted to blend in. I didn't want people to look at me, talk to me, notice me, or even think about me. All I did was therapy, for seven to eight hours a day, followed by eating and sleeping. I gained 30 pounds and couldn't care less. And then, Christopher Reeve passed away.

Suddenly superman was dead. He did it all. He advocated for stem cell research, pushed for spinal cord injury research and now, he vanished. And suddenly, I was left with feeling emptiness, followed by a sense of irresponsibility. What had I done to fight for a cure? What had I done to advocate for others with disabilities? What had I done other than wallow in self-pity? In a matter of seconds, my attitude shifted and I realized I need to do something, anything! As I did that, all of a sudden I looked at my pants and ugly t-shirt and, finally, in a mirror, and I saw a different person. This wasn't me. My skin was red, flaky, grey in spots, oily in some; I looked like a mess. I didn't even want to spend time with myself, so why would anyone else?

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Singer, Songwriter, Quad, Vic Chesnutt, Checks Out - Death By US Health Care

Vic Chesnutt, 45, a singer-songwriter of spare, idiosyncratic folk tunes tinged with melancholy, died Christmas day in Athens, Ga., after an intentional overdose of prescription muscle relaxants, a family spokesman said.

Paralyzed after a 1983 single-car accident when he was driving drunk at age 18, Mr. Chesnutt had limited use of his arms and hands but nonetheless carved out a career in music, which included being a guitarist. He was discovered in the late 1980s by REM frontman Michael Stipe, who championed his early recordings, and he gained the respect of music critics and fellow musicians who were struck by his darkly humorous songs.

Chesnutt is reported to have said that car accident focused him as a musician and poet. He had attempted suicide several times before, but his latest album included  Flirted With You All My Life which he wrote as a breakup song with death. In it he expresses his wish to live.

Among the risk factors for suicide are physical illness and barriers to accessing mental health treatment. Among the protective factors is support from ongoing medical and mental health care relationships. Chesnutt had long-standing troubles with health insurance. Despite attempts to help:

In 1996 his songs were performed by Madonna, the Indigo Girls, Smashing Pumpkins, R.E.M. and others for “Sweet Relief II: The Gravity of the Situation” [ link], an album that benefited the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, a nonprofit group that offers medical support for musicians.

Just a few weeks ago he was a guest on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. In that interview he discussed his dire health insurance situation:

Mr. CHESNUTT: I have been amazed and confused by the health care debate. We need health care reform. There is no doubt about it, we really need health care reform in this country. Because it’s absurd that somebody like me has to pay so much, it’s just too expensive in this country. It’s just ridiculously expensive. That they can take my house away for kidney stone operation is -that’s absurd.

GROSS: Is that what you’re facing the possibility of now?

Mr. CHESNUTT: Yeah. I mean, it could – I’m not sure exactly. I mean, I don’t have cash money to pay these people. I tried to pay them. I tried to make payments and then they finally ended up saying, no, you have to pay us in full now. And so, you know, I’m not sure what exactly my options are. I just – I really – you know, my feeling is that I think they’ve been paid, they’ve already been paid $100,000 from my insurance company. That seems like plenty. I mean, this would pay for like five or six of these operations in any other country in the world. You know, it affects – I mean, right now I need another surgery and I’ve putting it off for a year because I can’t afford it. And that’s absurd, I think.
I mean, I could actually lose a kidney. And, I mean, I could die only because I cannot afford to go in there again. I don’t want to die, especially just because of I don’t have enough money to go in the hospital. But that’s the reality of it. You know, I have a preexisting condition, my quadriplegia, and I can’t get health insurance.

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Wheelchair Man Holds 5 Hostage at Gunpoint

WYTHEVILLE, Va. (AP) -- An armed man in a wheelchair took five hostages Wednesday at a post office in western Virginia, forcing officials to cordon off three blocks of a downtown filled with holiday shoppers.

Shots were fired, but there were no reports of injuries. The man made no demands other than to ask for a pizza, said Pete Rendina, spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

Virginia State Police sent in a SWAT team and a bomb technician, and police at the scene told the Wytheville Enterprise the man had five pounds of a common plastic explosive strapped to his chest. State police spokeswoman Corinne Geller would not confirm that.

Susan Holman, manager of a store across the street, said officers told employees to leave the building because there was a man with explosives in the post office.

"The officer told us the man had enough explosives to take out the whole block," Holman told the Enterprise.

Mayor Trent Crewe told The Associated Press five hostages were in the building, including three employees and two customers.

Carlton Austin said his daughter, postal worker Margie Austin, was among the hostages. She managed to call a family friend around 4:30 p.m. and said she was fine. Later, her father said, family members were waiting to hear more.

"That's all we can do," he said.

Postal worker Walt Korndoerfer said he was in the post office when he heard shots and a co-worker ran past. He called police and then ran himself.

His wife, Christine Korndoerfer, said he called around 3:30 p.m. to tell her he had gotten out safely.

"My husband is not one to get upset," she said. "When he called, I don't think I've ever heard him so upset."

Town manager Wayne Sutherland, speaking from his office four blocks from the scene, said dozens of officers had circled the freestanding, brick post office.

"It's completely surrounded by police in every direction," Sutherland said. "All I can see is blue lights."

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SCI Research Head to Meet with Obama

Will Ambler, president of a local nonprofit organization devoted to spinal cord injury research, has been invited to speak with President Obama’s disability advisor, Kareem Dale, on Jan. 7 at the White House.

“The meeting is scheduled to last approximately one hour and is an exciting opportunity to get the needed recognition and funds for curing spinal cord injury,” Ambler said.

The focus of the meeting involves three topics: the national cost of spinal cord injuries, how Santa Ynez Valley-based SCI Research Advancement can help find solutions, and how the administration can help SCI do that.

In addition to the White House invitation, SCI has launched a fundraising campaign with a Hollywood connection.

With the help of NBC and the staff from the hit television show “The Office,” SCI Research Advancement is holding an Internet raffle. The winner will receive two round trip tickets to Hollywood to visit the set of “ the office,” meet star Steve Carell and the rest of the cast, and enjoy a two-night hotel stay, all for a $1 ticket.

At the White House meeting, a discussion of the cost of spinal cord injury is important and timely as it pertains to the current health care reform debate, Ambler said.

“According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, spinal cord injury costs the U.S. taxpayer 20 billion dollars every year for the care of people who are chronically paralyzed, and the acute cost for spinal cord injury is 5 billion dollars every year, according to the National Institute of Health,” Ambler said.

“This includes costs to private insurance and public costs. Acute care takes place within the first six months and includes hospital and ICU care, initial rehabilitation, relocation, and acclimation to life in a wheelchair.

“There are 1.25 million people living with spinal cord injury in the U.S. The U.S. government spends 100 million (dollars) on cure research. There are 1.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the U.S. The research budget for AIDS is 3 billion dollars. The funding is disproportionate for the population that suffers from spinal cord injury,” Ambler added.

The second point Ambler wants to raise is how SCI Research Advancement might be able to facilitate treatment and start human clinical trials.

“There have been great strides made in laboratory experiments, but to date nothing has translated into curing a human sitting in a wheelchair. We hope to change the lack of applied research with our meeting,” said Ambler.
His third point will be ways the administration can help SCI with these plans.

http://www.santamariatimes.com/news/local/article_b42c8a2a-ee00-11de-85e0-001cc4c002e0.html

No Condom, No Accident

A B.C. man who became paraplegic after contracting herpes from unprotected sex lost a $200,000 disability award Friday when the Supreme Court of Canada sided with his insurance company in a ruling that concluded that his misfortune, while tragic and unexpected, was not an accident.

The unanimous court said that allowing Randolph Gibbens to cash in "would stretch the boundaries of an accident policy beyond the snapping point" by effectively turning it into health insurance for disease sufferers, with lower premiums.

The case, which pitted the Co-operators Life Insurance Company against the former high-pressure water blaster, centred on the meaning of the word "accident" in
deciding insurance claims.

The ruling overturned two earlier victories for Gibbens in British Columbia courts, which had ruled that he lost the use of his legs by accident because he could not have anticipated it.

Gibbens, who is in his late 40s and lives in the Vancouver suburb of Port Coquitlam, contracted a rare form of genital herpes after having unprotected sex with three women in early 2003. The virus attacked his spine and paralyzed him from his abdomen down.

"I agree with the courts in British Columbia that Mr. Gibbens's paralysis was tragic and unexpected but I do not agree with them that it was caused by, 'external, violent and accidental means' within the meaning of the insurance policy," Justice Ian Binnie wrote in the 9-0 decision.

"In the case of Mr. Gibbens we are dealing with a disease transmitted in the ordinary course of having sex."
The B.C. Supreme Court, in siding with Gibbens two years ago, said his paraplegia was an unexpected outcome of having unprotected sex and that his behaviour, while foolish, was a far cry from engaging in "inordinate risk," such as laying down on the centre line of a highway during traffic.

The ruling was upheld in the B.C. Court of Appeal.

The Supreme Court, however, said it is not enough that an outcome be unexpected.

"In ordinary speech, 'accident' does not include ailments proceeding from natural causes," Binnie wrote.

"It cannot be correct that passengers sitting in an airliner who catch the SARS virus through the externality of the plane's air circulation system, or riders on a bus who catch 'swine flu' from an infected fellow passenger, or people who contract any number of infectious diseases because of a failure to wash hands in disinfectant, or to smack a circling mosquito, have valid claims under an accident policy."

Do Helmets and Pads Make Football Players More Prone to Injuries?

Do helmets and pads make football players more prone to injuries?

UMKC physics professor Robert Riggs is a man of science, so naturally he has a few theories.

But not all are limited to the scientific world that many people try avoiding. In fact, one is about football.
Riggs believes there would be fewer serious injuries if players didn’t wear pads or helmets.

“As a retired Marine officer,” Riggs said, “I know that when you’re wearing body armor, sometimes you feel invincible and I think there’s some of that. They put on all those pads and they feel invincible.”

But wouldn’t football without the pads and helmets basically be rugby?

Well, that’s Riggs’ point. He says rugby is far less dangerous than football.

“I actually played football in high school back in the 70s and they taught us to tackle with our shoulders,” Riggs said. “The first thing you did before tackled anyone was you broke down on someone; in other words, you came to a stop and tackled them leading with your shoulder or a glancing blow with the head.

“Now they coach them to just fly using the head as a missile for the most part.”

Riggs didn’t have any empirical evidence to back up his claim, but a study done last year in the British Journal of Sports Medicine appears to confirm his theory.

The study found that collegiate rugby injury rates were lower than those reported by the NCAA Injury Surveillance System for football, but similar to rates reported for men’s and women’s soccer in 2005–06.

One of the authors of that study is Lyle Micheli, director of the Division of Sports Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. He said rule changes to rugby scrums have dramatically cut down on the number of spinal-cord injuries in that sport.

“Rugby does have injuries, but a lot of them are cuts and broken noses, that kind of thing,” Micheli said in a phone interview. “There’s no blocking in rugby. The actual amount of hard physical contact in rugby is less.

The major impact is occurring in the tackling situation. The scrums are kind of a controlled force, there’s no impact from them. One scrum is pushing against the other, so there’s not much injury. …

“In American football, probably every player is receiving impact-type contact.”

Micheli believes that football rules should be amended to allow for the ejection of players for a serious hit, particularly when the intent is to injure an opponent. He even advocates a red-card, yellow-card system that is used in soccer.

And like Riggs, Micheli believes poor technique is to blame for many of the serious football injuries.

“There’s a ballistic aspect to it. Even at the pro level, you see these defenders who sometimes hit like a projectile,” said Micheli, who is also Associate Clinical Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “They won’t even put their arms out to tackle the guy. They’ll bang them with their heads. They lack good, basic football principles."

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Regeneration, It's in the Genes

FRIDAY, Dec. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Deleting a gene that suppresses natural growth factors enables regeneration of injured nerve fibers (axons) in mice, a new study shows.

The finding may lead to new treatments for people with brain and spinal cord injuries.

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Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston deleted the gene SOCS3 -- an inhibitor of a growth pathway called mTOR -- in the retinal ganglion cells of mice. These cells are in the optic nerve, which carries signals from the eyes to the brain.

Removel of SOCS3 resulted in vigorous growth of injured axons. The greatest improvement was seen after one week, when the researchers also detected signs that the mTOR pathway was re-activated. Axon growth increased even more when the researchers applied a growth factor called ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) directly to the eye of mice in which SOCS3 had been deleted. But CNTF only modestly boosted axon growth in mice that still had SOCS3.

"CNTF and other cytokines [cellular signaling molecules] have been tested for promoting axon regeneration previously, but with no success," study leader Zhigang He, of the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Children's Hospital Boston, said in a university news release. "Now we know that this is due to the tight negative control of SOCS3. Inhibiting SOCS3, using small molecule compounds or RNA interference, might allow these cytokine growth factors to be functional."

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Being in the Wheelchair, That's the Easiest Part

Like looking at an iceberg, Brandon Sulser's immobility is only the tip of his challenges from quadriplegia.

"Being in the wheelchair, that's the easiest part," he says.

Sulser's severely bruised spinal cord makes it difficult to breathe, because his diaphragm is weaker. It's easy to overheat because his body doesn't sweat. Quadriplegics and paraplegics often have lowered heart rates, leaving them prone to dizziness and fainting, struggling to keep up with workouts and at a higher risk for heart attacks.

Usually, doctors and physicians study and treat those complications when a patient is undergoing rehabilitation. But now Intermountain Medical Center, teaming with the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in New York City, will research those effects right after a spinal cord injury occurs.

The effects of spinal cord injuries are widespread because nerves are linked to the whole body -- "It's how
the brain talks to everything in your body," said Jolene Fox, a senior researcher at the Intermountain's trauma services.

The observational study's goal is to pinpoint the timing and way different systems deteriorate. Future studies could develop treatments to address those changes before rehab, and help improve a patient's quality of life.

"Right now, it's more that we support body systems until they get to rehab," said Mark Stevens, trauma services medical director at the Murray hospital. "What we hope is that these studies would lead
to interventions to treat those changes."
Patients with severely bruised or severed spinal cords are often kept in the trauma area for 10 to 20 days before they are released to begin rehabilitation, Stevens said.

But now, Stevens hopes to enlist patients who will allow their various organ systems to be tested within three days of their injury. He expects to find that dramatic changes occur quickly.

The days after the injury can be a difficult for people adjusting to the likelihood they will be paralyzed, but Sulser, who now works at Intermountain counseling other patients, expects many will enroll.

"I think a majority of people, if not all, would love to be part of this research because it gives us more of a future and a better hope of recovery," Sulser said.

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New Break-through in SCI Reseach

Deleting a gene that suppresses natural growth factors enables regeneration of injured nerve fibers (axons) in mice, a new study shows.
The finding may lead to new treatments for people with brain and spinal cord injuries.

Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston deleted the gene SOCS3 -- an inhibitor of a growth pathway called mTOR -- in the retinal ganglion cells of mice. These cells are in the optic nerve, which carries signals from the eyes to the brain.

Removel of SOCS3 resulted in vigorous growth of injured axons. The greatest improvement was seen after one week, when the researchers also detected signs that the mTOR pathway was re-activated. Axon growth increased even more when the researchers applied a growth factor called ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) directly to the eye of mice in which SOCS3 had been deleted. But CNTF only modestly boosted axon growth in mice that still had SOCS3.

"CNTF and other cytokines [cellular signaling molecules] have been tested for promoting axon regeneration previously, but with no success," study leader Zhigang He, of the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Children's Hospital Boston, said in a university news release. "Now we know that this is due to the tight negative control of SOCS3. Inhibiting SOCS3, using small molecule compounds or RNA interference, might allow these cytokine growth factors to be functional."

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Dramatic Increase in Spinal Cord Injuries from Afghanistan

Military medical officials have expressed concern over an increase in spinal injuries among U.S. troops coming home from Afghanistan. Afghan insurgents have responded to the increased presence of heavily armored U.S. vehicles with larger and more powerful roadside explosives.

Roadside bombs have become the top killer of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not only do the roadside bombs lead to crushed spines and other spinal injuries, they also result in traumatic brain injuries when soldiers are exposed to blasts, even with no impact to the head.

A USA Today story reported that the recent increase in spinal injuries occurred among soldiers in Afghanistan and not Iraq. The increase in spinal cord injuries among troops has arisen due to increased potency in roadside bombs used by insurgents. The U.S. Military issued 3500 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles as an attempt to deal with the roadside bombings. Unfortunately, Afghanistan insurgents responded with stronger and larger bombs.

Some of the 3500 MRAP vehicles deployed in Afghanistan have been lifted a few feet off the ground by roadside bomb explosions. Even though the MRAP vehicle may remain intact, some soldiers have suffered serious spinal cord injuries in the explosions. The MRAP vehicles cost about $1.4 million.

Medical professionals and Army engineers are comparing data to explore possible alterations and improvements to the MRAP vehicle design to make it safer for soldiers who are exposed to increasing roadside bomb possibilities. The MRAP vehicles, which cost about $1.4 million to make, have a hull designed in a V-shape, which helps to deflect the force of explosions away from the center of the vehicle, the USA Today article reported.

Since there are very few paved roads in Afghanistan, rebels can easily bury roadside explosives in the dirt roads, undetectable to soldiers driving along the roads at high speeds. Although the military has recently send over newer and lighter MRAP vehicles with better seating and harnesses, more improvements are still in the works to ensure the vehicles are safe for combat.

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Salamanders Can Regenerate, Why Can't You?

ScienceDaily (Dec. 9, 2009) — For more than 400 years, scientists have studied the amazing regenerative power of salamanders, trying to understand how these creatures routinely repair injuries that would usually leave humans and other mammals paralyzed -- or worse.

Now, fueled by a highly competitive National Institutes of Health Grand Opportunity grant of $2.4 million, a multi-institutional team of researchers associated with the University of Florida McKnight Brain Institute's Regeneration Project has begun creating genomic tools necessary to compare the extraordinary regenerative capacity of the Mexican axolotl salamander with established mouse models of human disease and injury.

Researchers want to find ways to tap unused human capacities to treat spinal cord injury, stroke, traumatic brain injury and other neural conditions, according to Edward Scott, principal investigator for the GO grant and director of the McKnight Brain Institute's Program in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.

"The axolotl is the champion of vertebrate regeneration, with the ability to replace whole limbs and even parts of its central nervous system," Scott said. "These salamanders use many of the same body systems and genes that we do, but they have superior ability to regenerate after major injuries. We think that studying them will tell us a lot about a patient's natural regenerative capacities after spinal cord injury and nerve cell damage."

The issue of what controls organ regeneration was named among the top 25 major questions facing scientists in the next quarter century by Science magazine in 2005, Scott said. With medical science continually adding years to the human lifespan, the importance of "rebuilding and restoring" old tissues and organs is growing. But science had to enter the 21st century to fully explore the use of the highly regenerative axolotl as a model for human disease.

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If You Were a Worm You Could Walk

This tiny worm became temporarily paralyzed when scientists fed it a light-sensitive material, or "photoswitch," and then exposed it to ultraviolet light.

(American Chemical Society)

Ever since a Canadian team of scientists revealed they had figured out how to paralyze worms - and then cure the paralysis - just by flashing the worms with different beams of light, Neil Branda has been asked the same question over and over.

What animal is he going to paralyze next?

None, as a matter of fact, he says.

The worms simply served as a dramatic confirmation of the first known ability to use light as a means of switching a biological function on and off, and it could have major implications for fields ranging from optical memory to medical surgery in humans.

Light switching has been used for years in non-biological systems, such as transition lenses that darken when exposed to light, and then reverse the process when the light dims. But this is different.

Related

 

"Nobody we know of has put light switching into live organisms and then shown a reversible biological effect, at least to the best of our knowledge," chemist Neil Branda, leader of the team of researchers at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia said in a telephone interview. The findings were published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Visible Light Activates and Reverses Paralysis

The researchers designed a molecule that "for several complicated reasons" they thought would induce paralysis in tiny transparent worms, C. elegans, when exposed to ultraviolet light.

The molecule was dissolved in an aqueous solution and then "orally administered" to hundreds of nematodes, which turned blue and went into paralysis. That was expected, because similar experiments have been done in labs around the world.

However, when the worms were hit with visible light, the process was reversed and the nematodes regained their mobility and appeared "as if they had never been paralyzed," the study reports.

Why is that such a big deal? Light is already used to switch on biological functions for treatment of arthritis and several types of cancer, called photodynamic therapy, but once the process is switched on, it can't be switched off.

Thus the drug remains active for some time - at least four weeks according to the Mayo Clinic - so patients have to avoid bright lights for six weeks to keep the activated drug from doing extensive damage elsewhere in the body.

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Paralyzed Rugby Player Now Wants to Live

Friday, 4 December 2009

A man who wanted to die after being left paralysed by a rugby accident is now celebrating a first class law degree and a job at a top city firm.

He is one of several people with a disabled or terminal condition who are glad they didn’t end it all, and who now live a life of value and meaning.

Matt King, who was 17 at the time of the accident, suffered injuries to his spine which left him permanently paralysed from the neck down and dependent on a ventilator to breathe.

His case has been compared to the tragic death of Daniel James, another young man who suffered a debilitating rugby injury and committed suicide at the Dignitas facility in Switzerland.

Mr King said of his accident: “I knew I had broken my neck straight away”.

He added: “The paramedics were asking me to move my toes and I couldn’t. It was completely terrifying.”

“My first thought was ‘let me die’ because my vision of what my life would be like was awful.

“But I realised in hospital that I’m still young and if I was going to lead a meaningful life I would need to get an education.”

Speaking against plans to legalise assisted suicide, disability rights campaigner Baroness Campbell said: “A change in the law based on the assumption that some lives are more valuable and worthwhile than others would alter the mindset of the medical and social care professions, persuading more and more people that actually the prospect of an ‘easy’ way out is what people such as me really want.”

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NIH Starts First New Stem Cell Lines Research

The National Institutes of Health said Wednesday that it had approved 13 new human embryonic stem cell lines for use by federally financed researchers, with another 96 lines under review.

The action followed President Obama’s decision in March to expand the number of such cell lines beyond those available under a policy set by President George W. Bush, which permitted research to begin only with lines already available on Aug. 9, 2001.


Since that date, biomedical researchers supported by the N.I.H. have had to raise private money to derive the cells, which are obtained from the fertilized embryos left over from in vitro fertility clinics.

With federal money banned from being used in any part of the work on the derived lines, researchers had to divide their laboratories and go to extreme lengths to separate research materials based on the financing source.

“You can imagine what it meant not to be able to carry a pipette from one room to another,” said Ali H. Brivanlou, a researcher at Rockefeller University. “They even had to repaint the walls to ensure no contamination by federal funds.”

Two of the newly approved 13 lines were derived by Dr. Brivanlou with private financing. The rest were prepared by Dr. George Daley of Children’s Hospital, Boston.

Dr. Daley said that private financing had been drying up and that he was eager to start research on the now-approved cell lines with the help of his federal grant money.


The director of the health agency, Dr. Francis S. Collins, said he believed most researchers would be satisfied with the outcome, even though they were still barred from deriving the cells themselves. “I’m not sure everyone is interested in deriving their own cell lines as long as they can get lines from others,” Dr. Collins said.


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Poor Poor Mayor, Denied Right to Squash Small Children with iBOT

The Magic Kingdom wasn't so magical for one Florida man over the holiday weekend, reported The Miami Herald. Myron Rosner, the mayor of North Miami Beach who also happens to be paraplegic, says he was repeatedly hassled by Disney employees over his high-tech wheelchair.

 

The 49-year-old Rosner, who was paralyzed in a construction accident, uses an iBOT 4000 wheelchair. Johnson & Johnson manufactured only a few hundred of these unusual items before discontinuing the product line earlier this year, said the Sun Sentinel.

 

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Rosner Family

Myron Rosner is seen here with his family at Disney World, seated in his iBOT 4000 wheelchair. The upright, two-wheeled configuration of the chair caused Disney employees to mistake it for a Segway.

 

Unlike most wheelchairs, the four-wheeled iBOT is able to tilt back on two wheels and lift the rider to eye level. And that's where the trouble started at Disney World, said the Herald.

 

At both the Animal Kingdom and Epcot parks, Disney employees approached Rosner and his family and insisted that he drop back down to four wheels. They cited a Disney policy that forbids the use of two-wheeled Segway devices inside the park, the Herald reported.

 

"I was totally harassed by Disney World," Rosner told the Herald. "It was a nightmare for my wife, myself and my four children. They gave me the impression I was not welcome here.''

Rosner was allegedly told that if he didn't drop down to four wheels, he would be asked to leave the park, said the Sun Sentinel. On principle, he refused.

 

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