This will be interesting to watch...

-Jim

Computer Chip Offers Paraplegics Chance to Walk

By Will Hardie

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Paraplegic Marc Merger knows his dream of strolling through the countryside on a sunny day will remain just that -- a dream.

But thanks to a computer chip implanted near his spine and wired into his leg muscles, the Frenchman is hoping for a more modest miracle.

``I know I will not walk through the fields again. I just want to be able to walk upright from room to room. That would be an incredible thing.''

``For you, that's something normal. For people like me, it's enormous,'' he told reporters at a news conference Monday unveiling the medical breakthrough that allowed him last week to take his first steps in 10 years.

Merger, 39, was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident just after Christmas 1990. He became the first test patient for the ``stand up and walk'' project, a collaboration between seven European companies and academic institutions.

Spinal Cord Severed In Car Accident

His spinal cord was severed, preventing signals from his brain reaching his legs. The matchbox-sized implant is designed to recreate those signals and stimulate the leg muscles one by one in the right sequence to let him walk, supported by a frame.

Merger, who is married with two children, must wear a transmitter strapped to his chest and wired to a laptop computer, which a technician uses to direct his legs by remote control. He took his first steps in this way on March 17, but was unable to do so again Monday due to a technical glitch.

He said he hoped a device would soon be designed small enough for him to carry and control his own legs.

Paraplegic patients have been fitted in the past with electrodes on the skin which stimulate the muscles externally to get a similar result.

But this is the first time a chip has delivered microelectronic signals directly into the nerves, raising further hopes for some of Europe's 300,000 paraplegics. Project coordinator Pierre Rabischong said more funding was needed to enable him to test new patients to see if they were suitable for such implants. But he warned that only a fraction would be suitable.

``They need muscles to be able to stand, so the (injury) must not have damaged the brain's motor center to the lower limbs, meaning the muscles waste away. But our goal is to allow people in all the countries of Europe to go into a center near their home to have tests to see if they can enter the program.''

He cautioned against overinflated expectations.

``It won't work for everyone ... You can't just plug in a chip and be able to walk. You need a lot of motivation, like Luc, and a lot of training.''

Two young Italian men are next in line for the treatment. They are building up their leg muscles by electronic stimulation and learning to walk with external electrodes before having a device implanted.

The implant alone costs 200,000 French francs ($29,580), plus costs of training and rehabilitation. Rabischong said he hoped sponsorship and grants would contribute enough for a Europe-wide network.

``We need more money but the money is not the real problem. The money can be found,'' Rabischong said.

``This can lead to concrete results, specific benefits to human beings in the real world ... We want eventually to allow people to walk with some elegance and to improve their quality of life.''

-- Jim Morris (prism@bevcomm.net), March 20, 2000

Answers

Link

-- Jim Morris (prism@bevcomm.net), March 20, 2000.

More info:

STRASBOURG, France -- A paralyzed Frenchman took his first steps in 10 years after a revolutionary operation to restore nerve functions using a microchip implant, newspapers reported on Sunday.

Marc Merger, 39, who was paralyzed in a car accident, received the implant in February during a ground-breaking operation that doctors said gave new hope to thousands of paraplegics.

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-- Jim Morris (prism@bevcomm.net), March 20, 2000.

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-- Jim Morris (prism@bevcomm.net), March 20, 2000.

Jim:

Thanks for posting that story. I has a chance to do some work on some very early prototypes on an electronic spinal bypass system while in college in the early 70's. I always thought this was one of the best things that computers offered to the suffering so I'm glad to see it's finally coming true.

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), March 20, 2000.