Christopher Reeve dies at 52

BY JAMIE TALAN Staff Writer

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BEDFORD, N.Y. -- The man who played Superman in the make-believe world of superheroes spent his last nine years living the role.

"One cannot measure in words what Christopher Reeve has done," said Dr. Philip E. Stieg, a professor and chairman of neurosurgery at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan. "It spans between science and social policy ... He used his injury as an opportunity to help mankind."

Reeve, 52, died Sunday. His death was due to a bed sore -- emblematic of the common infections that can be life-threatening to a patient whose body is paralyzed.

Last month a sore, or pressure wound, developed on his buttocks and led to a staph infection. Despite antibiotic treatment, the infection grew severe and entered his bloodstream, leading to his organs shutting down, said Maggie Goldberg, a spokeswoman for the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, based in New Jersey.

On Saturday, Reeve went into cardiac arrest at his home in Bedford and fell into a coma, Goldberg said. He was taken to Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco and never regained consciousness. The next day, at 5:30 p.m., he was pronounced dead at the hospital. His family was by his side.

A horseback riding accident in 1995 severely damaged Reeve's spinal cord just beneath the skull. The horse halted abruptly before a fence, throwing Reeve headfirst to the ground. He was paralyzed from the shoulders to the tip of his toes and breathed mostly with the help of a ventilator.

After months of rehabilitation, Reeve embarked on two campaigns: The first was a public effort to raise awareness of the devastating effects of spinal cord damage and generate funding for research. The second, begun in 1999, was done in private, a persistent, all-out effort to conquer his paralysis.

He equipped his house with sophisticated exercise machines, including a recumbent bicycle hooked to a machine that stimulates muscles to move the pedals, and undertook a rigorous daily exercise program. Within a year, he began feeling sensation again -- and by the fall of 2000, he managed to move his left index finger, he said in a Newsday interview in 2002 as his 50th birthday neared.

He termed his progress at that point "exhilarating," though he conceded his goals were daunting: To be able to breathe on his own some day. To even "get use of a hand so that I can feed myself."

He said he could sense hot and cold, had two-thirds of the normal sense of touch and could make small movements with his wrists, elbows, fingers, knees and toes. In a pool with assistance, he could move his legs. "I had developed enough strength in my legs that I could push off from one leg, kick the other forward and step," he said.

"We don't know what more will happen," he said in the interview, "and that gives me the motivation to carry on." Reeves' improvement suggests that there was growth of nerve connections around the damaged site. Dr. John McDonald of Washington University in St. Louis, who designed the exercise program, said that, in the past year, Reeve could move his legs on a recumbent bicycle without help from machines.

"Chris was the worst case, he had no functional recovery for five years and his injury was as severe as it gets," said McDonald, who spoke with Reeve a few weeks ago. "He went on to recover sensation throughout his entire body, and after a few years he could move the muscles in his arms, legs and abdomen.

"Any recovery would have been substantial," McDonald said. "But Chris achieved about 20 percent functional improvement, which is amazing."

McDonald said that he and Reeve had spoken about the possibility of donating his brain and spinal cord for study. But Goldberg said yesterday that there would be no autopsy.

"Chris has given enough of himself," said Dr. Oswald Steward of the University of California at Irvine. Even without confirmation that the nerve connections have improved, he said, "we all think we are on the threshold of major new treatments."

Reeve's experience led to a rethinking of scientific dogma, which had held that recovery wasn't possible after severe spinal cord damage. Such injuries disable 12,000 people in the United States each year.

Indeed, dozens of scientists have credited Reeve with opening the research door. "In the face of devastating injury, he found the strength to jet all over the world to support medical research for spinal cord injuries," said Dr. Ira Black, founding director of the Stem Cell Institute of New Jersey, a research center started by Rutgers and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. "Before Christopher and his foundation, there was very little going on in an area that was considered hopeless."

Reeve and his wife, Dana, started the foundation, which funded about $3 million in individual research grants each year. He would sit in on foundation meetings where scientists talked about the latest research.

"He knew as much as scientists did," said Moses Chao, a member of the foundation's scientific advisory board and professor of cell biology at New York University School of Medicine. "He felt that answers could be found in basic research and he was a tireless advocate."

"Christopher was such a driving force in our field," said Steward. "He has single-handedly marshaled resources, led the drive for research and put a face on spinal cord injury for the world to know."