This is where the staff of the Reeve Foundation is sharing up-to-the-minute information and putting some context around the news affecting the spinal cord injury and paralysis community. Not to mention insight into what's going on here at the Foundation.
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"Finally, a good disability PSA"
Posted by
JLoTuesday, March 20, 2012
We just produced a new public service announcement asking people to support research for the study of SCI. It was developed by the Reeve Foundation's advertising partner BBDO New York, and features Rob Summers, a former college baseball pitcher, who was completely paralyzed from the chest down in 2006 after being struck by a vehicle in a hit-and-run accident.
Today, Summers is able to stand and step with assistance on a treadmill and move his legs voluntarily. These unprecedented outcomes are the result of his participation in a landmark scientific study of a novel experimental therapy that combines continual direct epidural stimulation of his lower spinal cord with intense locomotor training (assisted stepping on a treadmill). The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Reeve Foundation.
Here is our first review of the PSA from New Mobility Magazine:
After the dominos fall, they are put in reverse, and then Rob is showing standing up using breakthrough experimental epidural electronic stimulation in his legs, with an overdubbed voice saying, “What if it was possible to reverse the affects of spinal cord injury.“ Effective? Yes. Then of course the voice tells people to consider donating to The Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation. The PSA’s aim is clear: To get people excited about the possibility of a cure for spinal cord injuries. And I am loving it.
I’ve seen PSAs telling kids to not fall stupidly or to not to drive drunk so they don’t end up like me (those always make me cringe), but this….this is a refreshing change. If you’re injured. whether you agree or disagree with some of the methods used in spinal cord injury research and funded by the Reeve Foundation, you gotta love that a national PSA is going to be put out there that shows our situation in a vein of hope, of futuristic possibilities, not one of doom and gloom and only using our peers a warning sign to others.
Read the rest.
Watch the :30 PSA now!
Learn more about the treatment Rob Summers got.
Janelle
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