UCLA scientist gives couple hope while searching for a cure for paralysis

If you think listening to a paralyzed, blind man discuss his life does not sound uplifting, meet Mark Pollock. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy, whose TED talk about body language has nearly  15 million views, describes the new talk by Pollock and his partner, human rights lawyer, Simone George, as “the most powerful, moving talk I have ever seen at TED.”Pollock lost his vision at 22 and became paralyzed after an accident at 39 that left him, in his words, “on the very edge of survival.” You certainly wouldn’t know that seeing him now in this talk, titled “A love letter to realism in a time of grief,” and the fulfilling life he is living.In the talk, he and George discuss how during the 16 months spent in hospitals, doctors discouraged them from hoping for a cure for paralysis.“Cancelling hope ran contrary to everything that we believed in,” says Pollock, who in 2009 became the first blind person to race to the South Pole. “Yes, up to this point in history, it had proven to be impossible to find a cure for paralysis, but history is filled with accounts of the imposs ible made possible through human endeavor — the kind of human endeavor that took explorers to the South Pole at the start of the last century, and the kind of human endeavor that will take adventurers to Mars in the early part of this century. We started asking why can’t that same kind of human endeavor cure paralysis in our lifetime.”A robotic exoskeletal device allowed Pollock to stand a...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news