Georgia Injury Law Blog
It’s not just wireless companies and commercial television stations that are in the way of a revolutionary new technology that could provide a cure for spinal cord injury. The promoters of the cure are also up against the military. However, that’s not stopping the nonprofit Alfred Mann Foundation from continuing its efforts towards a treatment.
The treatment involves the use of coordinated electrical impulses from implanted devices. These impulses stimulate the muscles, thereby allowing the limbs of the spinal cord injury victim to move. Initial tests have shown dramatic results in spinal cord injury victims. Some of them have not just been able to regain movement, but are now back to doing the things they did and enjoyed before they suffered the injury.Buoyed by these successes, the Alfred Mann Foundation is pushing for wider use of this technology.
There’s one major catch, however. In order for the signals to be transmitted properly within the human body, the technology requires electromagnetic spectrum. The four bands of recommended bandwidth that are ideally suited for the technology are currently occupied by the military, commercial land mobile radio and emergency mobile radio. None of these entities are keen to share their bandwidth with the application of a medical device.
They have their reasons for this refusal. According to them, there is just too much risk to a patient with the implanted device, if he’s too close to a high-power transmission. For instance, if a person with the implanted device is around whenever there is a live television broadcast using up bandwidth, a high-power transmission could cause havoc with the device. The foundation insists that this isn’t a problem, and that the device can resist dangerous interference.
The Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration are caught in the middle of the tussle. Obviously, this isn’t an easy decision for them to make.There are also some still unidentified risks associated with allowing the technology to use the bandwidth. However, if some way is found out of this impasse, then thousands of spinal cord injury victims across Georgia will be able to regain movement again.That should be enough reason for accident lawyers in Atlanta to support progress on this matter.