Doctors and advocates for spinal cord treatment research say increased taxpayer dollars to help cure the rare but devastating injuries could save medical costs on a large scale.

“The activities of daily living, the able take them for granted,” said Dr. Eric Ruby, founder of Massachusetts Walks Again, the local chapter of Quest for the Cure, a national organization for research, political activism and fundraising for spinal cord injury patients. “Once you’re disabled, all of a sudden your world is turned upside down," Ruby said.

Spinal cord injury (SCI), though uncommon, can be devastating. When the spinal cord is damaged, it cuts off communication between the brain and the rest of the body. The costs of treatment and equipment to deal with the disability over a lifetime can grow into the millions of dollars for individual patients.

Injuries sustained from car accidents, sports, bad falls or acts of violence leave 17,000 people a year with complications like loss of sensation, loss of reflexes and paralysis. According to Ruby, 400 Massachusetts residents receive a spinal cord injury each year and almost 1.3 million Americans currently live with the condition.

Tim Brown, who broke his neck in a skiing accident five years ago, said that it’s important to “recognize people with spinal cord injuries as individuals.” 

“It’s a condition that really significantly affects people’s lives,” he said, “Just because it’s maybe a smaller subset of the population compared with other things such as cancer or heart disease, it’s important that we still get together ... and get the word out there.”

At a State House event Wednesday, Ruby called for increased funding for spinal cord research and clinical trials, particularly in Massachusetts' bustling medical sector. Ruby pointed out that funding for a cure is not an “expense” for taxpayers, but an “investment.” 

Ruby said Massachusetts has a “high concentration of hospitals, scientists and patients" in Boston and the potential for medical research could “greatly reduce the amount of health care dollars spent by residents.”

The state's spinal cord research fund has issued three major grants from the fund, according to Ruby. One of the $250,000 grants went to researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute to map out how the brain and spinal cord communicate. Others have gone to research projects at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Children's Hospital.

“The federal government really needs to understand that if we ever cured diabetes, we will save healthcare billions, if we cure spinal cord injury, we would save healthcare billions,” Ruby said. 

According to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center, a spinal cord injury can cost an average of more than $1 million for tetraplegic patients, for the first year. Each subsequent year after costs an average $185,000. This only accounts for healthcare and living expenses and not for lost wages or lost benefits. 

Taunton state Sen. Marc Pacheco hosted the event to update the advocates and supporters on research advancements, new legislation, and funding for spinal cord research.

Pamela Daly said spinal cord injury patients are a minority in the medical community. “It’s like any minority,” she said, “we don’t have a big lobbying group, there aren’t a lot of us ... [but] we need funding like anyone else.”

The advocates did score a victory last November, when the Legislature put into law steady funding for the state’s spinal cord research fund, named after the late Brockton state Sen. Thomas Kennedy. Kennedy was paralyzed at 19 after a bad fall, and was one of few quadriplegics to hold political office. The fund heavily relies on driver's license suspension fees, but after changes in the way the fees were handed down, the money dried up. The new law restored much of the funding for research. Pacheco's office said the fund's current balance for fiscal 2016 is $48,700, up from $23,600 in fiscal 2015.