Research on traumatic spinal cord injuries is hampered by a reliance on animal experiments that don’t accurately predict human outcomes, says a new study in the upcoming edition of the peer-reviewed journal Reviews in the Neurosciences. The review was written by scientists with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

“Despite decades of animal experiments, we still don’t have a drug to cure spinal cord injury in humans,” says Aysha Akhtar, a neurologist with PCRM and the lead author. “According to the Journal of the American Paraplegic Society, at least 22 agents were found to improve spinal cord injury in animals, but not one of these was helpful in humans,” says Dr. Akhtar.