Word: cords
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...surprising that nearly 500 N.F.L. players have been injured seriously enough to miss a game so far this season. What's perhaps more surprising is that there aren't more accidents like Dennis Byrd's. In the previous 15 years, only two pro players have suffered permanent spinal-cord injuries. (Diving holds the dubious distinction of being the most backbreaking sport...
...that banned "spearing," in which a player uses his helmet as a battering ram to tackle an opponent. Torg had shown that spearing was a leading cause of neck injuries (indeed, experts are debating whether Byrd accidentally speared his teammate). Since the ban, the number of permanent cervical-cord injuries among high school and college players has plummeted from 34 reported in 1976 to just one last year...
...move his hands or legs. With all the power of his 266 lbs. of hurtling flesh, Byrd had unintentionally rammed his helmeted head into the chest of his 275-lb. teammate Scott Mersereau. The impact crumpled a vertebra in Byrd's neck, crushing part of the underlying spinal cord as well as plunging dagger-like slivers of bone into the soft, vital nerve tissue...
...Spinal-cord injuries, which afflict 10,000 Americans each year, were until recently considered untreatable. But researchers have begun to unlock the secrets of nerve growth and regeneration, and are even talking, in very cautious tones, about the possibility of reversing paralysis. "There are potent new tools that could change the extreme statements often made by physicians, such as 'You'll never walk again,' " says Dr. Richard Bunge, scientific director of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. "That may all change -- maybe not within this decade, but certainly within the next...
...first breakthrough occurred when neurologists realized that damage to the spinal cord continues to progress for about 48 hours after the initial accident. As the first nerve cells die, they release toxins that attack neighboring cells that have managed to survive. Some of these toxins are renegade oxygen molecules, called free radicals, that eat through cell membranes. The ensuing flood of biochemicals destroys even more nerve cells. The devastation spreads from the gray matter at the center of the cord to the white matter that surrounds it. Ironically, the body's response to injury only makes matters worse. The inflammation...