Reeve Foundation Paralysis Community

Irving Wesissman, M.D., is a physician scientist who directs Standord's Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. This is a major stem cell program and Weissman is therefore a major figure in stem cell research. He recently became president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) an independent, nonprofit that promotes the field and offers professional and public education in all areas of stem cell research and application.

Weissman promises an activist term as president, urging vigorous research but tempered with reality. One area he plans to tackle is the spread of stem cell clinics overseas. At his urging, ISSCR formed a new committee, Task Force on Unproven Stem Cell Therapies.

Here's what he told the journal Nature recently: "I can't tell you how many phone calls and letters I get every week that start of with "I have blank untreatable condition and I'm going to blank for stem cell therapies. Tell me it's okay.' And of course I can't tell them it's okay. It's time to have a professional body do it.

Weissman urges that ISSCR publish a 'blacklist' of rogue stem cell treatments " ... we need to list unproven therapies. To do so we need to get from the practitioners of potentially unproven therapies a statement that would allow anyone to look at the peer-reviewed papers from independent investigators that give the evidence that the putative stem cell therapy should work for the disease specified. If they lack peer-reviewed demonstrations of the discovery behind the therapies and IRB and FDA-type approvals, I would recommend that they be put on a list of unproven therapies."

Herewith the requirements, once again: (1) The provider or clinic must be able to send peer-reviewed papers from independent practitioners that establish the therapy as possible. (2) The provider must send evidence of approval from an independent committee, such as an institutional review board (a document from the clinical entity where the therapy is being practiced that shows the steps taken to protect the patient and justifying the experimental or approved therapy for their specific disease). (3) The provider must send a document from an agency equivalent to the Food and Drug Administration showing the approval of the experiment or the therapy for human subjects with their disease.

Says Weissman, without all three, patients "must assume they are receiving an unproven therapy and that [he or she] is in danger of risking their life or health, of losing their money, of being away needlessly from home, family, and friends, and of course, of not being therapeutically improved."

An international task force of physicians, lawyers and advocates has been formed at ISSCR to deal with the blacklist idea: Chair: Patrick Taylor, JD Children's Hospital Boston; Roger A. Barker, PhD, MRCP Cambridge Centre for Brain Repair; Elena Cattaneo, PhD Univ of Milano Dept of Pharmacological Sciences; Alan Colman, PhD Singapore Stem Cell Consortium; Hongkui Deng, PhD Peking University; Harold S.H. Edgar, JD Columbia Law School; Claude Gerstle, MD Ophthalmologist and Advocate; Lawrence S.B. Goldstein, PhD University of California San Diego; Andrew Lyall, Stem Cell Network; Fernando Pitossi, PhD Leloir Institute; Douglas A. Sipp, Riken Center for Developmental Biology; Alok Srivastava, MD, FRACP, FRCPA Christian Medical College; Susan Stayn, JD Stanford University; Gary Steinberg, MD, PhD Stanford School of Medicine; Amy Wagers, PhD, Joslin Diabetes Center;  Irving L. Weissman, MD - Ex Officio Member, Stanford University.

Mad

This came in the other day, text and punctuation (cringe) unchanged:

i have been a patient of geeta shroff and i know she is a fraud and a manipulator of desprate people she is just trying to make as much money as possible with no regard as to the dangers of this kind of experimental therapy.

i hope anybody who is thinking of going to that shithole thinks and thinks again because YOU WILL REGRET IT ,because when you get home from the treatment you will be financially, mentally, emotionally and physically broken DO NOT BELEIVE HER LIES SHE IS A CON !!!!!

That's from the Internet fringes of Care Cure. The quote was posted last week by a scribe called Regretfull. If you want to see the original, go here, it's on page 45 of "Reports of Patients Treated by Dr. Geeta Shroff, India (Human Embryonic Stem Cells)."

As you will learn if you slog your way in to the discussion, Dr. Shroff runs a cure clinic in India. She takes on people with a long list of ailments including spinal cord injury, extracts $30,000 a visit, and then injects them with an embryonic stem cell line of her own cooking. There are those among us who are positively charmed by her. See Amanda Boxtel's cure travelogue.

But Western rationalists take off on Shroff because she hasn't shared the recipe. Nor has she shared data and outcome results in any way close to the manner of the scientific or medical professional. All we get is patient testimony on the Internet. Your job, then, is to take Amanda and Regretfull and sift out what sounds right. And ask yourself, do you really want to experiment with your own coin, and your own body, in Delhi?

That isn't the only active and amusing crack in the stem cell tourism façade. Another Care Cure writer has challenged the veracity of Ricci Kilgore's testimony about her embryonic stem cell recovery in the Dominican Republic.

From Page 18 of a thread called "Ricci Kilgore (found a cure)":

"Medra is a Scam and Ricci is a liar, by Lisa French, My friend and I have been trying to expose Dr Rader. Our goal is to shut down Medra. National attention would ruin Rader."

Ricci, who is no stranger here and can be seen on p. 186 of the Paralysis Resource Guide, and in two Reeve PRC videos (scroll down to skiing and horseback riding), is an incomplete para who walks with canes. She's from Reno but living in the San Diego area now; she is on the US Olympic adaptive ski team development squad, married to a Navy guy. She's a nice kid, sincere as heck and from the photo on Facebook, she's a newly minted mom. Congratulations Ricci, now saddle up a horse called acrimony.

Ricci tells the story of getting immediate recovery after getting hooked up with Dr. William Rader's stem cells at the Medra clinic, operating in the Dominican. Now come her challengers who discovered some old news clips from the time of her injury leading them to conclude Ricci may have already gotten tons of recovery back - long before she became the perfect poster girl for the perfect grift.

Rader, whose company is based in a house overlooking the Pacific in Malibu, California, is a psychiatrist and former owner of a chain of eating disorder clinics in LA. He was once married to All In the Family's Sally Struthers, which is meaningless except perhaps to boost his Hollywood bona fides. He's not real warm to the glow of the media (go here) but aggressively sticks to his story about the healing power of stem cells. He apparently got into the stem cell biz even before 1998, when human embryonic cells were identified. He had a clinic in the Bahamas that got shut down in 2000, thus the move to DR. He claims to have cured Alzheimer's and AIDS.

For the sake of fairness, here's Ricci's response to some of this recent hoopla.

But wait, there's more. This also came out last week, accusing Medra of fraud, threats and intimidation. The scam is international (send money to an offshore bank before Rader will bring you to the Dominican for stem cells harvested from the Ukraine). Even Ricci's husband and her new-age uncle back in Reno get drawn in. See this unfold on a website called RipOff Report. Bodie, from Parkville, Maryland, writes:

The web of interconnected fraud that has been uncovered is beyond belief. Dr Rader probably found Ricci through her so called uncle Dr James Forsythe, a homeopathic aka oncologist , who works with her mother Valerie Kilgore at the century Wellness Clinic in Reno Nevada. Dr Forsythe worked with Dr. Albert Scheller, Rader's chief scientist.

This is how I believe Medra found the perfect spinal cord patient that miraculously walked.

We're not talking about the accuracy and fairness of the New Yorker magazine here but all this noise might make you think, twice, about doing business with Shroff or Rader. The least you could do is ask them to clear the record for you: Are all those cure touts really on the payroll?

One more item to make the point that the wheels may fall off the stem cell tourism racket: Police in Hungary last week arrested four people they suspect of running an illegal stem cell clinic in Budapest. Ye gods! The cops say the treatments were unproven, based on stem cells taken from embryos or aborted fetuses, and cost as much as $25,000 per person. Read it here.

Mad

We visited the Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Hospital wheelchair sports program this week in Downey, California (for reference, it's right in the middle of the Los Angeles metroplex, one town over from Compton, framed by the 105, 605 and 5 freeways).

Rancho is a venerable place of healing and hope, going back 100 years ago as the site of the LA County poor farm. Fifty years ago this place was famous for taking care of a large population of people affected by polio. More recently, "the Ranch," as it is sometimes called, has been a Model Systems Center for spinal cord injury, famous for taking care of a large population of uninsured local youth transitioning from the many multicultural knife and gun clubs of LA.

We were there to deliver a check, a Reeve Foundation Quality of Life grant, to the Rancho sports program. In fact, the check was made out to Las Floristas, a 65-year-old charity comprised of women who fund programs (over $7 million so far) for younger folks at the Ranch. Las Floristas wrote the grant on behalf of the wheelchair sports program, which will use the money to buy specialized sports chairs for peewee basketball players.

Deborah Veady, a volunteer grant writer for Las Floristas, accepted the check. (As an aside, Ms. Veady's father, an amputee, was a beneficiary of Rancho expertise over 50 years ago.) On hand to bear witness and to give us some perspective were two members of the fourth best in the U.S. Rancho Renegades wheelchair basketball team, Daniel Nong and Danny Maravilla, along with their coach and long-time Rancho sports maven Lisa Hilborn. The team motto is "push hard or go home."

Herewith are a few quotations from the group. You get the message that around here sports isn't only about purposeful exercise or being part of a team effort, or even about putting the whoop on an opponent. For some, including Daniel and Danny, sports provides a ticket, good for whatever you want it to be for.

Daniel Nong, 16, hometown Long Beach. Shooting guard, makes 20 percent from the three point line, number 55, and co-captain of the Renegades: "Before I started playing wheelchair basketball I was a quiet kid, I didn't go out, didn't make friends. I was passive about everything. But basketball has given me intensity - life is my oyster, is that the saying? Basketball has given me a goal, to get a scholarship, to go to college. My advice to young people who might be in a wheelchair is that sports will lead the way. Never give up on life. Sports has changed my life so much."

Danny Maravilla, 16, Long Beach. Point guard, playmaker, number 00, co-captain. Once played wheelchair basketball on the TV show "Suite Life of Zack and Cody." "Basketball has kept me out of trouble. Where I live, there's a lot of not good stuff going on - like gangbangers and drugs. If not for being in sports I'd probably not still be in high school. I can go to college now. The way I look at it being in a wheelchair, you can take it as a bad thing or can make it into a positive thing. For me, my social life is better. Others look at me not as a kid in a wheelchair but as a basketball player."

Lisa Hilborn, Rancho wheelchair sports director for 20 years. "Wheelchair sports is a powerful vehicle to pull athletes into a positive environment. We have a strong program here but our emphasis is on grades: we are involved with the schools and monitor their progress. We push the kids until they are intrinsically motivated."

As for the grant money, the program will help younger ball players get the right gear to get to the next level. "We sincerely thank Las Floristas...without them the wheelchair sports program would not exist."

Deborah Veady: "Thank you Reeve Foundation."

Mad

The red pill makes you better. So does the blue one, even though its action is different. So, doesn't it figure that taking red and blue together will make you all the more better? If two or three, or even six or a dozen therapies showed some promise on their own, why not just take everything. Toss in the proverbial kitchen sink.

Of course therapeutic synergy doesn't work that way. Drugs and treatments are by no means additive or complementary. They may interact in unpredictable ways or create new side effects. Drugs in combination may cancel each other out. Polypharmacy could make you worse.

Combination treatment has not yet become an issue in spinal cord injury, but it could as new treatments emerge. An injury to the spinal cord isn't a fast and neat process. After the primary damage to the cord a biochemical process continues for hours, days and even months. This secondary wave includes blood loss, swelling, inflammation and tissue degradation due to a range of toxic cellular events.

While there's not much that can be done about the primary cell loss, at least not in today's clinic, there are strategies to intervene in the secondary cascade to preserve nerve tissue and therefore function. These strategies will require combinations of therapies, timed over months, maybe years, to deal with specific cellular events, long axon growth and guidance, scar reduction, remyelination, and so on. The array of treatments must be carefully sequenced for optimal recovery.

Scientists are already thinking about such combo therapies. Here's a look at a recent study wherein it was postulated that two treatments together would result in a better outcome than either would have alone. The paper was written by a team including Reggie Edgerton of UCLA, and Martin Schwab from the University of Zurich. Both the Edgerton lab and the Schwab lab are part of the Reeve Foundation International Research Consortium on Spinal Cord Injury. The work was funded in part by the Foundation.

One arm measured the effect of Schwab's anti-NOGO-A antibody, the other looked at the effect of treadmill training (underpinned in large part by Edgerton's basic science). Both the antibody and treadmill have been shown separately to enhance recovery after spinal trauma. The antibody does this by neutralizing NOGO, a chemical barrier to nerve growth. Treadmill training is believed to work by using movement to refresh nerve plasticity and thereby unmask latent stepping patterns within the spinal cord.

The anti-NOGO treatment is now in clinical trials in Europe and Canada; it is hoped that the trial will expand next year in the U.S.

The treadmill work is the basis of the Reeve Foundation NeuroRecovery Network.

One group of rats got the anti-NOGO treatment for two weeks following incomplete thoracic spinal cord injuries. Seven days after injury these animals then began training on treadmills five days a week for eight weeks. The combined treatment group was compared to rats that got just the anti-NOGO and to animals that just got treadmill training.

Are the treatments synergistic?

The short answer is no. Animals that had both the antibody and the physical therapy actually showed a diminished functional recovery.

The scientists suggest that as the antibody promoted nerve fiber growth, these fibers may have reestablished pre-injury connections. Meanwhile, however, the treadmill training may have interfered with this process. The two therapies may be competitive.

It may be a matter of timing; the scientists observed that it was better to allow two weeks longer for the regenerative process to rewire the cord before introducing activity-based therapies.

What's next? Says the paper, "The optimal arrangement of combinatorial treatments, e.g. a growth and regeneration enhancing treatment followed by appropriate rehabilitative training remains an exciting challenge for future studies."

In other words, more work to do, hold the sink. Future treatments most certainly will be done in some sort of combination or sequence. It will take a while to sort it out so the whole really is greater than the sum of the parts.

Mad

Stem cell treatment overseas anyone? You may still be tempted by Internet testimonials as people who spend thousands of dollars report uniformly modest results. One more plea for rational thought may not make much difference but there are some very good reasons not to become a medical experimental tourist. A group of prominent scientists and doctors has just penned a cautionary letter to the medical journal Spinal Cord. It's entitled "Position statement on the sale of unproven cellular therapies
for spinal cord injury," from The International Campaign for Cures of Spinal Cord Injury Paralysis.

It is printed in whole below. If you want the distillation, here are several take home sentences:

People with SCI, as with any serious medical conditions, are highly susceptible to advertisements promising recovery, even when the costs are high and potential risks are unknown. It is morally unacceptable to prey on and profit from their hope for a cure.

Patient-reported anecdotes are not a substitute for medical evidence.

First, there is a significant placebo effect, especially in neurological diseases which functions such as sensation, spasms or residual movements can vary daily.

Herewith the letter:

Over the past few years, it has become possible for people with spinal cord injury (SCI) to purchase experimental treatments, often involving transplantation of 'stem cells' or other cells or tissues. These cell-based therapies are advertised as having beneficial effects, leading to some recovery of function, even though there is little or no evidence supporting such claims. Generally, these interventions are provided in countries where government regulation for consumer protection is less comprehensive or effective than in many developed countries.

This trend is of concern for several reasons. People with SCI, as with any serious medical conditions, are highly susceptible to advertisements promising recovery, even when the costs are high and potential risks are unknown. It is morally unacceptable to prey on and profit from their hope for a cure. We believe that it is unethical to charge these patients for experimental interventions that are not yet proven safe and effective by properly conducted clinical trials.  Frequently, providers of these treatments attempt to establish a veneer of credibility by citing experimental studies, where they have no direct association. Most often the critical scientific data to support the safety and efficacy of the new treatments are lacking, so they rely on testimonials from patients or their family members. Patient-reported anecdotes are not a substitute for medical evidence. First, there is a significant placebo effect, especially in neurological diseases which functions such as sensation, spasms or residual movements can vary daily. The only accurate way to determine that a treatment is beneficial is to carry out a properly designed study with a placebo-treated 'control' group. Individuals or institutions selling therapy to-date have not carried out controlled trials with valid methods and outcome measures recorded by blinded observers. Second, because of a clear conflict of interest, it is not acceptable that those who profit from providing the treatment should also carry out the evaluation of efficacy and safety.

Most cell-based treatments carry safety risks, many of which are common to surgery and transplantation in general. These risks can be significantly higher in people living with SCI and are currently not balanced by any reliable assurance of benefit. Thus, it is essential that anyone offering non-standard treatments for SCI provide rigorous long-term clinical follow-up at no charge to assess fully the risks versus benefits. Although highly experimental and potentially dangerous therapies may be more readily justified in people who have terminal conditions, the risk of using these therapies should be tempered by the fact that patients with SCI who receive standard medical care can anticipate a near-normal life span.

The risks and costs of untested therapies are not limited to the individuals who pay for such treatments. These interventions undermine objective scientific studies that would help other people with SCI. First, these individuals are likely to be excluded from subsequent involvement in scientifically valid clinical trials because of potential interference from the first intervention. Second, unsuccessful treatment of SCI with poorly characterized or unvalidated 'stem cells' in uncontrolled trials can undermine enthusiasm for future developments of valid stem-cell technology. Third, it may not be possible to recruit an adequate number of participants for valid clinical trials if potential participants have instead chosen to undergo uncontrolled, for-profit treatments. Thus, there is a cost to society, as well as for people with SCI when 'for-profit' therapies are offered and purchased.

We do not rule out the possibility that cellular therapies may improve function and quality of life for recipients and justify the risks, but insist that the onus is on the providers to deliver such proof from a valid clinical-trial program. It is unethical to sell unproven therapies, we do not advise patients to volunteer for such treatment procedures. Unfortunately, in the context of an entrepreneurial enterprise, it is unlikely that accurate, reliable or useful medical evidence will ever be generated.

More information on questions that should be asked of someone offering a treatment for SCI is available in the free document, 'Experimental Treatments for Spinal Cord  Injury: What you should know'. This is available in several languages at the International Campaign for Cures of Paralysis (www.campaignforcure.org).

A Blight, A Curt, JF Ditunno, B Dobkin, P Ellaway, J Fawcett, M Fehlings, RG Grossman, DP Lammertse, A Privat, J Steeves, M Tuszynski, M Kalichman and JD Guest

Mad

Geron gets nod for stem cell trial for acute SCI.

It apparently took 10 months to wade through the 21,000-page application, and perhaps a regime change at the top of the United States government, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finally gave the go-ahead to the nation’s first embryonic stem cell clinical trial.

The Geron Corp. has had data for several years showing that paralyzed rats got much better (they walked) after getting injected with a cell type generated from human embryonic stem cells. The company filed papers last March to move from lab animals to humans. The FDA, worried about safety, took its time with the process.

Timing? What timing? President Barack Obama said in his inaugural address on Tuesday that he’d “restore science to its rightful place,” George Bush is off to Texas and the very next day Geron gets a phone call from the FDA with the good news. But as Geron announced the decision today both the company and the FDA said the timing was purely coincidental. Here’s an FDA source: "The FDA looks to the science on these types of issues, and we approve [such applications] based on a showing of safety," said Karen Riley. "Political considerations have no role in this process."

Really? Science is now free from political pressure...now that is good news.

At any rate, this will be the first embryonic stem cell trial coming out of the regulated and scientifically vetted mainstream (which does not include stem cell soloists in India and the Dominican Republic). Geron will enroll 10 patients, that is, 10 unsuspecting people who will experience spinal cord trauma in the coming months. The goal of this Phase I trial is to establish that these cells, already fated to become a neural support cell, won’t grow out of control and won’t cause an immune response in the cord that exacerbates the trauma.

The work emerges from the lab of Hans Keirstead at the Reeve-Irvine Center in California. Read more here.

This is terrific news for the Reeve Foundation. See the ABC news coverage, featuring Board Chair Peter Kiernan, who describes the FDA action as a comet in our sky.  Here’s Reeve Foundation CEO Peter Wilderotter on the news and its connection to the legacy of Chris Reeve.

Interestingly, there was another big stem cell story earlier in the week. A British company called ReNeuron got approved by U.K. regulators to proceed with a stem cell treatment for people with ischemic stroke. The cells are not derived from embryos so there’s no political drama. Read more about that one here.
 
Here’s the official Geron press release.

Coverage, of course, is extensive. Wall Street Journal.
 
 And New Scientist.
 
 Mad

The historic inauguration of Barack Obama as the new President of the United States is Tuesday, January 20. The day rings in a new administration, a new era in politics and a fresh outlook for the American people.

Most of us will see this event unfold on television; some will keep up-to-the-second on Facebook or Twitter. Of course thousands of people coming in to Washington, D.C. have tickets, assuring some sort of seat away from the hoi polloi. For the masses of unconnected non-celebrities coming to town, the Mall is open to anyone, free. But expect a red alert in the area of inconvenience: it will be cold, crowded and lacking in creature comforts.

Be prepared. If you have a ticket, see this: for ticket holders.

The District has a good website set up on navigating the events of the day.

The Washington Post has run a series of articles on getting to and from the inauguration. See Inauguration central.

If you are old or have a disability, expect to camp out for a long day. In other words, be a scout and know your limitations. The D.C. Office on Aging has a handout (below) you must read if you want to take your chances seeing the inauguration. Bring your own food, medications, water and toilet paper. And don’t forget the camera.

Mad

Plan for Persons with Disabilities:
The organizers and transportation officials say people with disabilities and the elderly should expect long delays in getting to the National Mall, parade route and swearing-in ceremony. They are advising everyone to plan ahead and have a backup plan. Here's a highlight of what to expect on Jan. 20:

• No cars with disability tags or license plates will be allowed to park around the Capitol on Inauguration Day.
• People with disabilities attending the swearing-in ceremony may be dropped off at South Capitol and E Street and North Capitol and E Street, where golf carts will be available to transport them to security check points.
• Canes, including those with a fold-down seat, walkers and scooters are allowed at the swearing-in ceremony.
• There will be raised platforms for wheelchair users in the seating areas at the Capitol, but space is limited. Similar platforms will be on the National Mall, too.
• Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant bleachers will be available along the parade route for people with disabilities who have parade tickets and those who don't. 
• Sign language interpreters will be in different sections at the swearing-in and along the parade route. Open captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing will be available on large TV screens on the Mall and parade route. 
• Audio description services will be available for the blind and those with limited vision at the swearing-in ceremony and the parade. 
• Thirteen entry points for the parade will open at 7 a.m. Jan. 20. All will accommodate people with disabilities. 
• MetroAccess, the Metro transit system's subscription service for people with disabilities, will operate its regular schedule on Jan. 20, but there will not be service to inauguration venues or limited or cancelled service to downtown areas. Door-to-door service will be limited. Customers should expect major delays and to maneuver long distances on their own.
• Access to elevators in Metro's train stations will probably be limited because of crowds. Escalators won't be operating in certain stations. 
• Wheelchair-accessible port-a-potties will be available along the parade route, National Mall and Capitol grounds.

The recent Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, DC, showcased a huge range of work that, in the whole, leaves little doubt that regenerative medicine and functional recovery are moving forward.

(A tip of the MadWire hat to Steven Edwards, a C3 quad from South Carolina and a moderator for the CareCure community who compiled a long list of the SCI related papers.)

Even if you have little tolerance for the academic nature of the writing, it’s possible to tease out quite a bit of optimism from Edwards’ list. Here is a paper that caught my eye, a) because it’s aggressively intended to go to clinic soon; b) it was funded in part by the Reeve Foundation; and c) because it sounds like a pill to make you walk.

The formal title is “Pre-clinical and clinical development of a drug treatment for Central Pattern Generator (CPG) activation and 'reflex' stepping induction.” A group from Quebec led by Pierre Guertin began with the body of evidence that stepping motions in paralyzed animals are controlled not by brain input but in the spinal cord by a central pattern generator.

The role of the CPG is central to the field of activity based rehabilitation (e.g. the Reeve Foundation NeuroRecovery Network, which has in many people been able to activate the CPG with repetitive stepping patterns using weight-supported treadmill therapy).

Guertin, who has already set up a company in Quebec called NeuroSpina Therapeutics Inc. to take his early lab results to the clinic, went fishing for the molecular basis of CPG activation. Using a mouse model his group tried what he calls “a plethora of serotonergic, glutamatergic, adrenergic and dopaminergic ligands over the years.” Some of the drugs worked to induce rhythmic movements, flexion and extension, but when it came time to put weight on the hindlimbs, they had no success with true stepping.

So, using the skills of a bartender, Guertin mixed a drug cocktail (based on role of serotonin receptors) he has since patented and named Spinalon. He describes this drug as “First-in class activator of the Central Pattern Generator for locomotion. It acutely evokes, upon systemic delivery, repetitive walking movements for one hour in chronic and complete SCI subjects.” OK then, for the record, a drug to make your legs move in the pattern of walking.

Says Guertin, it appears to work. Weight bearing stepping has occurred in animals, and he’s gone on to try the drug in at least one human: “The first pilot test in patients was done recently. A monoplegic man who received Spinalon every 2 days for 2 weeks showed no atypical side effects providing first preliminary evidence of safety in men (Spinal Cord, in press).”

You might join me in wondering how a scientist can go from yet-to-be published data on humans to a full-on clinical trial, but Guertin is undeterred. People are already being recruited to test Spinalon, he says. Here's to everyone's patterns and to their continued generation. 

Mad