Reeve offers hope to Israeli patients

PATIENTS at Tel Hashomer rehabilitation centre in Israel had no time for Superman, only for Christopher Reeve, arguably the world’s most famous disabled man and now an ambassador for scientific research.

The pictures some of the patients in a hospital near Tel Aviv have pinned up above their beds are not of the caped wonder, but of the 50-year-old, balding and wheelchair-bound paraplegic who stunned the medical world this year by recovering some sensation in his body.

The actor who also starred in “Deathtrap” and “Remains of the Day” was paralysed from the neck down in 1995 after a horse riding accident.

“I was once told I would never move below my shoulders,” Reeve told 50 patients and their families during a visit on Tuesday. “But I began to get motor and sensor recovery five years after the injury.

“The point is that there is no such thing as conventional wisdom anymore and nobody, no patient can be told by any doctor what the future will be.”

Reeve’s visit to Israel, sponsored by the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles and the foreign ministry, was eagerly awaited by many young Israelis.