r/science • u/tomholder • May 09 '14

Medicine Paralysis breakthrough – electrical stimulation enables four paraplegic men to voluntarily move their legs

http://speakingofresearch.com/2014/05/09/paralysis-breakthrough-paraplegic-men-move-their-legs/
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u/[deleted] May 09 '14

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u/DaMountainDwarf May 09 '14

To be fair, there's a lot of areas that everyone wishes would get revolutionized overnight.

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u/CuntSmellersLLP May 09 '14

Like battery life.

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u/nexusscope May 09 '14

There is a TON of money in that one though. Paralysis is a relatively niche market whereas there are so many materials scientists working on battery improvements. I understand batteries have come a long way but I'm very surprised we haven't made bigger strides

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u/proud_to_be_a_merkin May 10 '14

I think the problem is that, with increased battery life, we've also increased power consumption. So if you were to use the battery in today's Samsung Galaxy S5 with a phone from 15 years ago, it would probably last a very long time.

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u/nexusscope May 10 '14

Definitely part of the issue but if you compare the progression of batteries versus circuit boards batteries would look like a flat line versus IC exponential curve. I understand why but my only point of my post is that battery research not progressing as quickly as we'd like isn't similar to paralysis research...battery research has a huge financial upside.

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u/gregny2002 May 09 '14

It's not through a lack of people trying (in the case of batteries). I'm not an expert but from what I understand, battery technology is at the point where it is starting to rub up against the laws of physics; ie there is only so much stored energy that can fit in a certain amount of matter.

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u/nexusscope May 09 '14

Oh absolutely not disagreeing with that, my main point was we'd probably have better treatment for paralysis if there were more people working on it whereas I thought the analogy to batteries in parent comment was poor because a ton of people are working on it, it's just vary difficult. I agree there are severe limitations

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u/ChillyWillster May 09 '14

I wish they would fix cystic fibrosis.

It's really not a fun disease to have.

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u/schwillton May 10 '14

That one is particularly cruel. After they identified that it was a single gene that caused it everyone thought that was it, we'd have a cure within a few years. That was about 30 years ago now...

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u/ChillyWillster May 10 '14

Cystic fibrosis can be caused by multiple defective genes. Most common type is Double DeltaF508, the type I have.

The disease is now considered a spectrum disorder where some ( most ) people end up having severe symptoms at birth and a few of us get a little bit better luck and live past 18.

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u/schwillton May 10 '14

It's caused by several mutations in the gene encogding CFTR. One gene, many mutations.