SEARCH FOR SCI CURE: are we getting closer or is it all a mirage?

We’ve been constantly reporting on the never-ending work involving finding a potential cure for a spinal cord injury. For certain, there have been a lot of false starts and hopes, wishful thinkings, total bombs, you name it but basically a lot of disappointments. At the same time, those few attempts currently in clinical trials are developing slowly and address only a certain aspect of the recovery of function. It’s not all doom and gloom but where exactly does that leave us?

Well, for starters, if you are truly interested in learning thoroughly the challenges the researchers are dealing with and why it’s been so difficult, commit yourself to reading “Don't Call It A Miracle: The Movement To Cure Spinal Cord Injury” by Kate Willette. It’s a free book (238 pages) produced by the Reeve Foundation that explains the basic biology of the injured cord, what the basic approaches the scientists are taking to heal, mend or bypass the nervous system and what you, as a non-scientist, can do to speed things along. It’s available in various formats, including a print version that can be sent to you for free.

Next, we found this recent article published by Freethink.com that might provide you with some hope for the future of a cure. For all practical purposes, it is widely assumed that there will not be one approach for a complete cure and that several “cures” are likely needed to return the majority of function back and there are a lot of asterisk marks even with that statement, such as the length of injury, the physical condition of the body (think bone density as an example), etc.

The work in this decade has given us more hope than ever before that incremental steps and cures are getting closer and closer and that hope continues to grow with the ever-increasing number of researches taking place.