Spinal Cord Injuries

He's a real-life hero, a compelling advocate, an inspiration. Yet some say his dramatic story could distract us from the realities of ordinary people living with a disability. Christopher Reeve's partial recovery from a severe 1995 spinal injury, the subject of a television special and a new book released last week, prompted a range of responses, from glee to caution, among the community of spinal cord injury advocates and patients.

Christopher Reeve has come up well short of the goal he had set for himself five years ago for his 50th birthday. But he is far from disappointed. In 1997, two years after he became paralyzed from a severe spinal cord injury suffered in an equestrian competition, the actor made famous for his role as Superman in several films, said he hoped to be walking by Sept. 25 of this year. He was determined to prove wrong the doctors who had said he would never walk again.

The weather was warm and the waves were low on a sunny day in 1995 when Chris McAleer's life as a surfer came to a jarring end. He remembers somersaulting off his board and splashing into the small waves off 48th Street in Newport Beach. His head hit the ground. He heard something click "I was face-down in the water and I could move my head, but I couldn't move my arms to start swimming," McAleer said. "I just started praying."

Nobody can accuse Patrick Kronenwetter, a 47-year-old attorney in Glen Ellyn, Ill., and a quadriplegic, of not having a sense of humor. When asked about the events that led to his spinal cord injury and subsequent re-entry into a world as a person with a disability, he's likely to wisecrack, "Well, I guess you could say I kind of fell into it." In 1989, while trimming a tree outside his home, Kronenwetter slipped and fell from his ladder, landing on his head.

A man with a partial spinal cord injury has gained impressive walking ability with treadmill training plus an implanted device that stimulates his spinal cord, suggesting that the combined therapy might help such patients, researchers report. About half of spinal cord injury patients have partial injury that allows some leg muscle movement but not useful walking. Prior studies have shown that with intensive training on a treadmill, however, some can learn to walk again.

A new device that was surgically implanted into a spinal-cord-injury victim allows him to talk easier and breathe without a bulky ventilator. "It's wonderful. There's nothing like this in the world," said Tom Conlan, 36, who injured his spinal cord in a swimming accident in 1998 and is a quadriplegic. "When I was on the vent, I'd have to wait for it to give me a breath before I could talk. Now I don't."

A new device that was surgically implanted into a spinal cord injury victim allows him to talk easier and breathe without a bulky ventilator. "It's wonderful. There's nothing like this in the world," said Tom Conlan, 36, who injured his spinal cord in a swimming accident in 1998 and is a quadriplegic. "When I was on the vent, I'd have to wait for it to give me a breath before I could talk. Now I don't."

A state-funded research pact between Indiana's top two state universities has yielded its first fruit--a human clinical trial that will test a promising new therapy for spinal-cord injuries. Purdue University and Indiana University said the Food and Drug Administration has cleared them to test on humans an implantable device that harnesses electrical fields to stimulate nerve growth in damaged spinal cords.

Christopher Reeve puffs on a straw that drives his wheelchair that drives his life in the direction of hope. His celebrity and his determination to fight for patients with paralysis have taken him into some of the most prestigious spinal-cord research laboratories in the country. He knows well that his injury--he's paralyzed from the shoulders down and requires a ventilator to breathe--was far too serious for him to qualify as a candidate in an experimental trial.

Spinal cord injuries can be ruled out without using X-rays by looking for simple neurological signs, UCLA researchers report in today's New England Journal of Medicine. In a study of 34,069 people suffering blunt-trauma injuries, Dr.