A STEP BEYOND PARALYSIS

DOCTORS PROVE THAT A SPINAL CORD CAN REPAIR ITSELF

The experiment was brutally simple. Scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden took 23 rats and neatly severed their spinal cords, paralyzing their hind legs. Then they took some of the injured rats and set about trying to repair the damage, using microsurgery to build hair-thin "bridges" across the spinal gap. It was an approach other scientists had tried in various forms for nearly 30 years, with little success. But this time, according to a report published last week in Science, it worked. Not only did the severed nerve fibers grow across the bridge, but the rats also began to regain...

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