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Daniel Tratt, 30, would love for that to happen. Tratt was paralyzed from the ribcage down as a college student 10 years ago when he fell over a stairway banister and dropped 23 feet. The first year was agonizing, as Tratt suffered from denial and depression. Today he's got two graduate degrees, is a special-ed teacher in New York City and has completed a triathlon using a handcycle and a racing chair. Tratt says he's not ready to volunteer for a clinical trial—he's worked too hard to get to where he is to risk any possible setback. Still, while he gets plenty of joy out of his life, he would be "elated" if one day there were a treatment that could improve his mobility and restore some function. "That's what most people in the spinal-cord community can only dream of."
Which is why it's so critical to be realistic. Geron has to show that its product is safe—the earliest the company might release preliminary data is 2010—before it can start officially testing its efficacy. What works in rats may fail in humans. And the treatment isn't intended for any of the 400,000-plus people who have chronic spinal-cord injuries now; another therapy—researchers are pursuing various cellular approaches—may prove more helpful down the road. The Reeve Foundation's Kiernan says people need to focus more on the process than on the event. "This safety study has taken on outsized import," he says. In the end, what matters most is how Geron and everybody else interprets what happens—good or bad. "Success doesn't mean we've made it, and failure doesn't mean we've lost it," Kiernan says. "We're at the very, very beginning."