Spinal injuries

NFL Hall of Famer Nick Buoniconti looks like he could handle any situation. The ruggedly built ex-athlete rumbled his way through the record books as a Miami Dolphin and Boston Patriot.

When his son was paralyzed from the neck down because of a football injury in 1985, he felt something new. Helplessness.

Today, thanks to research groups like the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, an outfit born from his son Marc’s condition, persons with spinal cord injuries have hope. And someday, the more optimistic among the scientific community say, injury sufferers may regain some of their mobility.

Our spinal cords carry messages to and from the brain and the various parts of our bodies through a network of nerve cells called neurons. A spinal cord injury results when the nerves within the cord are damaged, often when a fractured vertebrae crushes them due to a physical trauma.

According to the Miami Project, about 11,000 new spinal cord injuries occur each year in the United States, 80 percent of which happen to men. More than half (55 percent) affect people between the ages of 16 and 30.

Before World War II, a spinal cord injury likely was a death sentence. Complications such as kidney infections or respiratory problems after the accident often couldn’t be overcome.

Mr. Buoniconti’s impromptu crash course in these debilitating injuries began nearly 20 years ago when he received a phone call. His son had dislocated his neck making a tackle playing football for the Citadel and was clinging to life.

The father immediately flew to his son’s bedside. Three hours later, he looked into his son’s eyes and saw him wordlessly ask for help.

“For the first time in my life I couldn’t help him,” Mr. Buoniconti says.

That was the first step in the father and son’s collective effort against spinal cord injuries. Today, Marc Buoniconti, now off a respirator and breathing on his own, works tirelessly toward the Miami Project’s goals, while his father raises funds exclusively for the Miami Project trading in on a lifetime of connections, good will and just plain hustle.

Dalton Dietrich, scientific director of the Miami Project, based at the University of Miami, says clinical trials on humans involving regeneration of nerve tissue likely will begin during our lifetimes.

The trials conducted so far on animals, Mr. Dietrich says, offer promise.

“We have a lot of positive preclinical work showing we can enhance [nerve] regeneration and improve functional recovery in experimental animal models,” he says. “To move into people we need to show the therapy’s going to be safe.”

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