About Christopher Reeve's Accident

Christopher Reeve devoted the early part of his life to acting and eventually landed his most famous role as Superman. Almost a decade after removing the cape once and for all, Reeve suffered a near-fatal accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down. Although Reeve had been political since before his accident, this particularly tragic twist of fate turned him into one of the most passionate advocates for others who had suffered similar injuries. He also became one of the leading voices supporting embryonic stem cell research.

The Facts

• In 1995, a horse-riding accident shattered Reeve's first and second vertebrae. He woke up a few days later and had his skull reattached to his body with wires and titanium pins. He would have to undergo six months of rehabilitation just to breath on his own for thirty minutes at a time. As the actor who played Superman, Reeve decided to use his fame and influence to advocate for research into spinal cord injuries and stem cell research.

History of

• Born in 1952, Christopher Reeve played Superman from 1978 to 1987. In 1985, he also appeared in the film Anna Karenina, for which he learned to ride a horse--he would soon ride horses competitively. During a competition on May 27, 1995, his horse stalled during a jump and flung Reeve to the ground headfirst. He rehabilitated himself to the point of speaking at the Academy Awards in 1996. He regained only minor motor function. Reeve died on Oct. 10, 2004, of a heart attack, likely caused by an adverse reaction to antibiotics.

Type

• Spinal cord injuries widely, although almost half of them are caused by motor vehicle accidents. While quadriplegia involves loss of function in all four limbs, the loss need not be total. Injuries to the first cervical vertebra impede the use of the lungs and demands a ventilator, whereas damage to the seventh cervical vertebra can cause paralysis from the chest down, leaving the arms and hands mostly functional. If the spinal cord is severed, function will be lost from that point down--but partial severing or bruising often leaves some function.

Effects

• For the last decade of his life, Reeve lobbied constantly to increase federal funding on embryonic stem cell research. He argued for the use of human embryonic stem cell lines, which President George W. Bush had limited to those lines created on or before Aug. 9, 2001. Reeve lobbied in 2002 against the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001. He personally argued for Proposition 71 in California, which established the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Reeve himself would found the Christopher Reeve Foundation, which is devoted to funding research on paralysis and improving the lives of paralyzed individuals.

Significance

• A Juilliard-trained actor, Christopher Reeve was widely recognized as the face of Superman. This made his accident appeared all the more tragic--a man who once could fly could no longer walk. Fortunately, widespread respect for Reeve provided him with a platform for high-profile activism work. He become one of the most impassioned and compelling activists for embryonic stem cell research. His wife continued his work, until her own death in 2006 from lung cancer. The organization was subsequentially renamed the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.