Without doubt, Geoffrey Raisman is in line for a Nobel Prize. The little-known British professor has been the brains behind a breakthrough that ‘cured’ a paraplegic man. Bulgarian Darek Fidyka was left paralysed after a knife attack four years ago; images of him now standing upright shot across the globe a few weeks ago. For the first time in history, surgeons had successfully fixed a severed spinal cord. In a bizarre act of surgical jiggery-pokery, surgeons removed nerve cells from Darek’s nose and then transplanted into his damaged spinal cord. Once there, the nose cells stimulated nerves to grow across the 8 mm gap in the spinal cord. And amazingly, this ultimately gave him feeling and movement back in his legs. Read more