In 1998, the state Legislature unanimously passed legislation that created a Spinal Cord Injury Research Trust Fund, "to provide funding for research to find a cure" for spinal cord injury paralysis. Appropriately, since the leading cause of spinal cord injuries is automobile accidents, money for this fund came, not from new taxes, but from a dedicated surcharge imposed on motor vehicle violations.
Our coalition of doctors and scientists, leading law enforcement organizations and thousands of New Yorkers living with paralysis call on Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders to restore the $8.5 million mandated by the statute.
The prospect of secure funding has attracted at least 41 scientists to the state. They have leveraged the $71 million total granted from the fund almost 2-to-1 through the National Institutes of Health, private foundations and private industry.
The funding now needed to reach clinical trials of therapies with enormous potential is sufficiently small that its restoration to the fund will make an enormous difference.
If you stand up now for a cure for paralysis, those of us in wheelchairs may one day give you what you will richly deserve — a standing ovation.
DAVID A. CARMEL
Brant Lake and New York City
Former member, New York State Spinal Cord Injury Research Board