• Question: is there anyway we can get people to walk again?

    Asked by caitlink0406 to Amy, Drew, Julia, Kimberley, Sara on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Drew Rae

      Drew Rae answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Caitlin, this is a hard question. I think some of the other people in the zone can answer it better than me, but the answer is really “it depends”.

      Mostly, it depends on what stops people from walking. There are great stories like Douglas Bader who lost both his legs, and learnt to walk with artificial legs. He became a famous fighter pilot.

      Some types of spinal damage can recover over time, depending on exactly what has happened.

      There are ideas that people have for new treatments that can regrow nerve damage that the body can’t regrow by itself. You may have heard about “stem cell” research – this is one of the directions this research could go.

      Eventually, we hope that a lot of types of paralysis will be curable, but we aren’t there yet, so no promises.

    • Photo: Amy MacQueen

      Amy MacQueen answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      This does very much depend on what the reasons are for some people not being able to walk – maybe Kimberley could answer this one better as she knows a lot about nerves!

    • Photo: Julia Griffen

      Julia Griffen answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Again not my area, however I believe helping people walk again, after say a major injury or paralysis, generally require alot of after care and theraphy… however I just found this

      http://www.crownheights.info/index.php?itemid=34980.

      Scientists use electrical impulses to help a man walk! Cool!

    • Photo: Sara Imari Walker

      Sara Imari Walker answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Oh wow! Great question caitlinkk0406! Especially since it looks like you have stumped most of us 😉 Those are the best kind of questions – the ones we really have to struggle to figure out. Yay for science! I am definitely stumped for an answer to your question. But that intrigues me. I particularly like your question since it is right at the edge of known science. Drew and Amy have definitely hit on the fact that it depends on the medical condition preventing a person from walking. I think most people who are paralyzed have some kind of nerve damage. But we don’t yet know enough about the nervous system to be able to repair it. Future science will hopefully provide new cures! Perhaps even with insights from robotics (I personally am particularly fascinated by the robotic leg lab at MIT – imagine a whole lab devoted to making robot legs!!).

      Like Amy, I am curious to see what Kimberly will say b/c I want to learn more =) That’s the great thing in science too, no one of us can know it all – so we always get to learn from eachother. I am learning a lot her from Amy, Drew, Julia, and Kimberley!

    • Photo: Kimberley Bryon

      Kimberley Bryon answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hey Caitlin,

      This is indeed a hard question. As Drew said some kinds of spinal injuries heal over time and physiotherapy is a really important way of re-training muscles to work properly after an injury.

      Stem cell therapy is probably the best hope for the future. One of the groups in the building where I work are looking at regeneration of the nervous system by studying Schwann cells. They are getting some promising results, so I really hope that there will be a cure in the not too distant future.

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