Reality about cure of SCI

[BSgimp]

To Whom It May Concern,

we are decades away from anything close to an effective therapy that promotes neurological recovery of chronic spinal cord injury.

If you visit this forum frequently hoping one day you will find a miracle cure. Stop wasting your time.
If you are considering going to some unregulated stem cell therapy clinic. Stop, you are wasting your money/time and taking a risk for nothing.
If you are here cause you saw some sensationalized article title claiming mouse with SCI is running a marathon. Stop and click away. You have been fooled and you are wasting your time.
If you consider any invasive procedure to use some untested on humans device to stand for a couple minutes. Stop, and think about the risks you are taking. And the benefit you might/might not get.

The best thing we can do at this point is to move on with our lives. Be the most productive we can be. And support researchers we believe can have the biggest impact in the future. Our best hope is in a combination of everything that in on the horizon. The horizon that is far more distant than we realize.

[niallel]

Some people come here with hope, however remote it may be it keeps us going.

The less attention we give to the subject will be reflected in how much attention is given by others to a cure.

The best we can do is not to give up and move on as you suggest, its to work harder towards our dreams.

[Patrick Madsen]

Simpsons hit the nail on the head for sure. I know I searched for them in the early days. Still have scars from a remedy burning moss on one's Chakras on the back. Thing is I couldn't feel the burning and the "Practitioner" didn't realize it til we smelled burning flesh...mine lol.

I'm forty-five years post. I still use cure as part of my motivation to maximize my potential. Of course I know I won't walk again but doesn't mean I can't still use a mental set. It's kind of a running joke. Now a days, it's more to find ways to achieve fitness with a worn out body. I still go to the gym and work with a trainer, stand a few hours a week and handcycle with a power pod to push these worn out shoulders down the road.

Never give up visualizing what you trust will happen in the future. I use it as motivation every day. Lose the word hope.

Best advice I can give is to maximize your potential with what you have left, Keep a Positive Mental Attitude and keep in the best shape you can.

if there's a cure, you have to be in shape to be able to do the work. If there isn't a cure, you have to be in shape to drag your sorry ass thru life. And, get an education cause you'll have to pay for it.

You got it Niallel, never give up on your dreams!

[JoeMonte]

I have learned at 55 years old to move on .Nothing will happen in our life time except research. After raising many billions of dollars for Cancer look at were we are at. We don't have the funding, research or Funds to put us back together. We have to be thankful for living and move on in a positive direction. Many are trying to fix us and God Bless them. Keep the Hope! Best to All!

[Moe]

God bless everyone who made a ton of money all these years off our backs and gave nothing in return... pun intended.

[niallel]

God bless everyone who made a ton of money all these years off our backs and gave nothing in return... pun intended.

I completely get the frustration, but apart from charlatans selling unproven cures do you know anyone who has become extremely wealthy from working in this field?
Although if you are talking about the exec level salaries of some foundations then I agree some are obscene.

People working in scientific research might be earning good salaries, but you need to pay to get the best people to work on the problem. Im sure we all want the best working on the problem.

Unfortunately by their nature they are just interested in research. If they were more interested in becoming amazingly rich then maybe we would be further along.

[Mize]

I agree, but I'll still stand, stim, stretch and do the occasional assisted walk. "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity"

[darty]

Like Chris Rock says in a famous comedy routine "Doctors don't cure nothing they just patch shit up", "You think their going to cure AIDS? They ain't never going to cure AIDS" "They can't even cure athletes foot"

[funklab]

Like Chris Rock says in a famous comedy routine "Doctors don't cure nothing they just patch shit up", "You think their going to cure AIDS? They ain't never going to cure AIDS" "They can't even cure athletes foot"

I like this.

Doctoring is mostly delaying the inevitable (death) as long as possible. Nowadays we as a society have figured out how to cure the easy stuff (bacterial infections) that used to kill most people and figured out how to manage some of the nastier viral infections (immunizations) and prevent a lot of both of those in the first place (sanitation, clean water, public healthy), so what we're left with is all of the chronic diseases (high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, COPD, etc).

So much of doctoring is just trying to bring someone's blood pressure down a few points, or lower their blood glucose, or decrease the number of hospitalizations for a COPD exacerbation from 3 a year to 2 a year, all of which forestall death just a little bit longer. Unless you're an infectious disease doctor there's not much to be "cured".

Surely there will be a cure for the simple stuff like type 2 diabetes or atherosclerosis or HIV long before SCI. Those are all infinitely simple and extraordinarily well understood diseases in comparison to regrowing and reattaching correctly each of one billion individual nerves in the broken spinal cord.

[Mize]

I like this.

Doctoring is mostly delaying the inevitable (death) as long as possible. Nowadays we as a society have figured out how to cure the easy stuff (bacterial infections) that used to kill most people and figured out how to manage some of the nastier viral infections (immunizations) and prevent a lot of both of those in the first place (sanitation, clean water, public healthy), so what we're left with is all of the chronic diseases (high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, COPD, etc).

So much of doctoring is just trying to bring someone's blood pressure down a few points, or lower their blood glucose, or decrease the number of hospitalizations for a COPD exacerbation from 3 a year to 2 a year, all of which forestall death just a little bit longer. Unless you're an infectious disease doctor there's not much to be "cured".

Surely there will be a cure for the simple stuff like type 2 diabetes or atherosclerosis or HIV long before SCI. Those are all infinitely simple and extraordinarily well understood diseases in comparison to regrowing and reattaching correctly each of one billion individual nerves in the broken spinal cord.

Maybe.

Throughout the body, nerves repair just fine. It's only in the spinal cord and brain that they do not repair themselves. In rats, a recent study deleted a single dna sequence and nerve regrowth was restored in those rats' spinal cords.

If there's going to be a near-term "cure" for SCI it's going to be something like this. Even then, once new nerves grow and reconnect you're essentially a funking 9 month old baby learning to move its limbs again...LOTS of PT if you're ever going to relearn those connections from scratch.