PREVENTING PARALYSIS

BACKGROUND: According to the Spinal Cord Injury Information Network, there are about 11,000 new cases of spinal cord injuries each year in the United States. As of June 2006, there were about 253,000 people living with a spinal cord injury. When a spinal cord injury occurs, there is the primary insult — the impact — which neither doctors nor patients can do anything about. But there are also secondary injuries — the damage that happens in the minutes, hours, days and weeks after the primary injury. Dalton Dietrich III, Ph.D., from the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, says, “You have these Secondary Injury mechanisms that lead to progression of damage and that’s where we are working in the laboratory to develop new strategies, new drugs, new therapies to target that secondary injury.” Continue Reading »

Dr. Geoffrey Raisman and Dr. Ying Li describe in plain terms the research project to which they’ve dedicated their lives. Continue Reading »