Hope to end paralysis

For now, following his pioneering surgery on the paralysed Bulgarian fireman Darek Fidyka, pictured, he is a beacon of hope for hundreds of thousands of people around the world unable to walk because of spinal cord injury.

For now, following his pioneering surgery on the paralysed Bulgarian fireman Darek Fidyka, pictured, he is a beacon of hope for hundreds of thousands of people around the world unable to walk because of spinal cord injury.

Published Oct 26, 2014

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London - It’s too soon to say what the history books will make of Geoffrey Raisman. If he really has discovered a cure for spinal injuries, the professor may one day rank among the greats of medical science alongside the heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard or IVF researcher Sir Robert Edwards.

For now, following his pioneering surgery on the paralysed Bulgarian fireman Darek Fidyka, he is a beacon of hope for hundreds of thousands of people around the world unable to walk because of spinal cord injury.

Like many of the great medical pioneers, Raisman is a maverick.

A fiercely anti-establishment figure – he once named Tony Benn as his favourite politician – he came from a poor, working-class background and worked his way to the very top of his profession.

Colleagues describe him as an obsessive, meticulous researcher who has devoted his life to one cause – exploring how neurons, the cells in our brains and central nervous system, can regenerate.

Born in 1939, Raisman was the only son of a Leeds tailor.

His father encouraged his interest in science and later persuaded him to study medicine.

Raisman excelled at grammar school and aged 17 he won a scholarship to Oxford University – his father made his interview suit.

His rebellious, stubborn streak was apparent even then. At a time when Oxford expected students to be single, Raisman risked his college place by marrying his sweetheart Vivien aged 18.

She gave up her place at Edinburgh University and lived with him in one room in Oxford.

Raisman lost his scholarship but clung on to his place at the college.

He qualified as a doctor and stayed on at Oxford as a research neuroscientist.

Then in his twenties he made an extraordinary discovery. Using an electron microscope that magnified cells up to one million times, he found that the brain and central nervous system have an amazing ability to rewire themselves after injury.

If the brain is damaged, new connections spring up around the damaged area. The process – which Raisman named plasticity – was scientific heresy.

At the time, the established thinking was that once a brain was injured, or a spinal cord severed, the damage was irreparable.

He turned out to be right.

Today, it appears in every textbook about the brain.

In the 1970s, when Raisman suggested that brain damage could be reversed, he was accused of pushing “dangerous” ideas that would create false hopes. But he was determined to show that brain and spinal cord damage could be repaired.

In the 1980s, he had a second breakthrough when he discovered that the neurons involved in taste and smell had the unique ability to regenerate after they had been badly damaged. In the 1990s, he transplanted these cells into the severed spinal cords of lab animals.

They did their job and repaired the damage. He repeated the experiment dozens of times before moving on to people. His pioneering work culminated with the extraordinary success this week.

Other neuroscientists have however tried to play down the “breakthrough”. But as we have seen, scientists underestimate Raisman at their peril. – Daily Mail

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