Reeve's `walk' disturbs doctors and disabled

"To me, it was just another Super Bowl million-dollar commercial," said Perry Tillman, of the paralyzed Christopher Reeve's digitally enabled virtual-reality walk. The instantly controversial ad drew astonishment and some criticism from medical professionals and disabled patients.

"I've been a paraplegic for 34 years," said Tillman, "and I know the importance of hope. But you can spend your life hoping."

"It's nice to give hope to victims of spinal-cord injuries," said Dr. Robert D'Ambrosia, president of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. "But something like this happening anytime soon is far-fetched."

D'Ambrosia, who is chairman of the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Department of Orthopedics, said this opinion is shared by a number of his colleagues. "We had people down here from the academy doing some public education filming," he said, "and all of us were talking quite extensively about this among ourselves, and the general feeling was that this puts far too much false hope out there. You can do all kinds of things on a computer, but a computer is not a human person."

The dramatic ad, for Nuveen Investments, shows Reeve - paralyzed since a 1995 horseback riding accident - rising out of a chair and walking to stand onstage with other people who have been "cured" of spinal-cord injuries by medical research. The inference is that such an occurrence is imminent.

The commercial that debuted Super Bowl Sunday caused a flood of inquiries from people who took it not as an inspirational message, but at face value. They wanted to know where they, or injured relatives, could avail themselves of Reeve's apparent miracle healing. Reeve has defended the ad as representing "something that can actually happen . . . with money and talent focused on spinal-cord repair." Others feel the spot is misleading, even harmful.

"I have extremely polarized feelings about this," said Dr. Moshe Solomonow, LSU professor of orthopedics and director of bioengineering. "On the one hand, I am delighted that he (Reeve) is trying to draw attention to this devastating disability. On the other hand, it is very difficult for patients sitting there watching it, who don't know they are talking about the very long-term future.

"All people need motivation. Despite his disability, Chris Reeve is still flying all over the world, and now they see him walking. Most of these people are not Christopher Reeve. . . . They do not need false hope or the demoralizing effect it can bring."

Solomonow has been working on an LSU research project that has given limited mobility to paraplegics. "It involves a leg brace and electrical stimulation to the muscles," he said. "It allows them to stand up, frees them from the wheelchair. They can't do fancy stuff, but it gets them up, which is important, because there are 16 different medical complications from the physical stagnation these patients face, including urinary-tract infections, respiratory and circulatory problems, bones that become too fragile. . . . Just being able to stand up pumps the blood, builds up muscle and bone mass, and the heart and lungs improve."

Solomonow says 240 patients have availed themselves of this treatment.

So doesn't this justify, to some extent, Reeve's optimism?

"This is a more realistic treatment for paraplegics - where two extremities are affected - than for quadriplegics, where all four extremities are affected," D'Ambrosia said. He added that high-profile procedures featured on TV newsmagazines - where wires have been implanted into muscle and patients "walked" briefly - did not hold up in the long run. The experiments resulted in infections, fractures and broken bones.

"Everybody wants a cure for spinal-cord injuries," said Dr. Robert Mipro, chief of physical medicine and rehabilitative services at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center of New Orleans. "But no one in this field sees that happening in the immediate future. It's not on the horizon."

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"I was in a helicopter crash in 1966 in Vietnam," said Tillman. "My spinal-cord damage was complete - `crushed, damaged, destroyed' were the words used to describe my injury. I have no feeling beneath my navel. I'm in a wheelchair 100 percent of the time." But his disability hasn't stopped him.

"I finished Xavier (University) in '71," said Tillman, "became an accountant and just retired after 28 years with the USDA in their finance center. I drive a car with hand controls, my wife Diane and I have been married for 10 years, I'm active in veterans' organizations and we go to Hawaii every year. . . .

"You can be hoping something will change tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and pretty soon that's all you're doing.

"I say, `Get on with it.'

"That's hard to say - and harder to do."