This was work on repairing canine spinal cords in hopes to fine tune the technique for humans eventually, but since ferrets are mustelids, and therefore members of the branch which is thought to have most recently split from the canine branch perhaps this technique *MIGHT* prove useful for ferrets who suffer a severe spinal injury. (Hind leg weakness in ferrets is usually NOT due to an injury but instead is a common result of any serious illness, including very commonly happening with insulinoma.) http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?floc=ne-health-8-l0 &flok=FF-APO-1501&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20041204%2F0609523730.htm&sc=1501 The work was done in Purdue, Indiana University, and Texas A&M on dogs which had suffered injuries for which the treating vets held out little to no hope and whose owners were willing to try an experiment in case it might cure them offered by a team led by Dr. Richard Borgens, a neuroscientist at Purdue. The injected compound needed to start being used within 3 days of the injury. The resulting walk in some of the 68% helped was not normal but was an improvement; there were even some who returned to normal walking. In the study, 19 paraplegic dogs were injected with polyethylene glycol, or PEG - a nontoxic liquid polymer which is related to the poison, antifreeze, which was used in conjunction with standard surgery and steroids, so perhaps some of the dogs would have been helped, anyway, thought the assessments beforehand had been that they would not have been. It appears that PEG might both bandage and prevent or reduce secondary neural die-off, but what actually happens is still hypothetical. Previous work according to this popular press article was on guinea pigs, including some with spinal cords that were actually severed. I have NOT read the medical article nor a report in a scientific reporting newsletter like Science News where the writers tend to be decently versed in what makes a good study good, so there might be significant questions about the study which vets used to treating such injuries in dogs would have or those used to research design would have. That is always something which needs to be remembered when encountering reports of studies. Still, there might be some hope here and it might apply to ferrets with spinal injuries. Here is the Purdue link: http://www.vet.purdue.edu/cpr/ and here is a direct link to a website piece on new spinal injury treatments for dogs which I sadly don't have time to get to until later today: http://www.vet.purdue.edu/cpr/sci.html [Posted in FML issue 4717]