When you meet Duncan, the thing that strikes you the most is his warmth, confidence and open disposition.  
It makes you feel like you have known him for years. He looks fit and healthy; someone who is fulfilled and whose life and work has a sense of meaning. And so he should.

Duncan Wallace is the CEO of Spinal Cure Australia – a leading NFP in Australia, at the forefront of ground-breaking research that will help people with spinal cord injuries walk one day.

Had he had a different disposition, Duncan’s life could have been very different.
At the age of 24, Duncan had no idea what life had in store for him: In 1984 he was living and working on coffee plantations in Papua New Guinea. Newly married and in the prime of his life, he was driving home one night with his young bride when he was driven off the road by a drunk driver and severely injured. He was eventually flown to Royal North Shore Hospital as a c4/5 quadriplegic.

Many other people would have spent months in rehab. Not Duncan.
After many months in hospital, Duncan "skipped" rehab. This was 6 year before the web was born. While most people would be in a hospital doing hours of rehab, Duncan was striking a dealership agreement with Apple. This was at a time when quadriplegics were not expected to be able to work. But that’s what Duncan did and sold the original 128kb Macs before he moved onto this next venture.

Why did Duncan respond to this enormous life-changing challenge of becoming a quadriplegic with such strength and single-minded determination?
The key is in understanding his background.  Duncan’s Dad was a Chaplain in the British Air Force, so as a child the family moved around a lot but stability came from an unshakeable family unit.  His father went on to become Honorary Chaplain to the HRH The Queen and eventually died at the age of 92 years old in a motorcycle accident (while driving his own motorcycle) so Duncan inherited a can-do attitude and good genes.

After Duncan’s accident, there was no dwelling on what had happened. His parents in the UK, rather than giving him pity, expected him to get on with life and when I asked what he thinks makes him different, he replied that he places no limitations on himself.  

Being confident and knowing where you come from has helped him get on with life and focus on the future. Duncan is not one to spend much time thinking about how different his life could have been. He has spent most of his life avoiding the “disabled” world and rather focused on building successful businesses. And that he has done several times over. Other than selling Macs and assistive devices, other successful business ventures included creating Phonics Alive - a series of interactive literacy programs and in the very early days of the web an online travel agency which focused on travel from the US to Australia.

What does Duncan regret?
He would love to have had kids of his own. He loves nature and being in nature. He would love to go diving off an island - which he actually did on his 50th birthday. He had wanted to be a farmer and this leads us to the discussion around science and his attraction to the role of CEO SpinalCure. Science is such a powerful way of impacting people's lives. Today people are less inclined to "believe" science and gain hope from future medical advancements, mainly because they take so long to deliver results to the average man in the street.

CEO of Spinalcure 
As CEO of SpinalCure Duncan’s role is to help raise the profile of the organisation and raise funds for research that he believes, in his lifetime, will give people with Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) movement and function again. There are two issues that are being tackled.

• Acute injuries: how can we prevent permanent damage occurring in the first few critical hours after an accident?
• Chronic injuries: how can we make use of undamaged pathways in the spinal cord and regrow nerves in people who have lived with an injury for some time?

Scientists are taking a variety of approaches to these problems and given the complexity of the issue means a comprehensive cure will likely involve a mixture of these treatments. The approaches include stem cells, biomaterials, molecules/drugs, electrical stimulation, bionics, assisted exercise and inflammation management (more details below).

What's happening in Australia?
In Australia, there is still a great deal of funding that is being channeled into the quality of life for people with spinal cord injuries rather than finding a cure. We find it perplexing and quite disturbing. However SpinalCure has helped fund some terrific research projects including some that are now being tested in clinical trials that promise to benefit people in the not too distant future. At a recent insurance industry event Duncan explained how the insurance industry stands to gain significant cost savings when a cure, or even substantial rehabilitation is achieved. Emerging treatments are leading to better patient outcomes, which lead to significant cost savings for the insurance industry. 

Other organisations like iCare in NSW, which cover the cost of care for people that are catastrophically injured in motor vehicle accidents in NSW, would benefit immensely from this research but are yet to provide any financial support to SpinalCure.

Lets us be inspired by Duncan.
Duncan is someone who is single-minded in his quest: to find the funding for research that will ensure, in our lifetime, people with spinal cord injuries will be able to walk again. That would be some legacy to leave to our society Duncan! We have no doubt he will succeed.

Potential building blocks of a cure for spinal cord injuries include:

• Cells
  Stem cells, which have the potential to develop into every tissue in the body including spinal cord neurons but have yet to realise their potential.
  Schwann Cells that wrap around axons of motor and sensory neurons to form the myelin sheath which is lost after spinal cord injury.
   
• Biomaterials
  Scaffolds or conduits to guide the nerves across the gap in the spinal cord caused by nerve death. These may also be impregnated with stem cells and/or chemical factors.
   
• Molecules/drugs
  For tasks such as the prevention of nerve death before, the breakdown of scar tissue and the stimulation of nerve regrowth. 
   
• Electrical stimulation
  Stimulating the spinal cord below the level of injury has shown remarkable success in clinical experiments.
   
• Assisted exercise
  Functional electrical stimulation and intensive exercise programs exemplified by SCIA’s NeuroMoves program will likely be a required adjunct to any cure.
   
• Inflammatory response
  This has the capacity to help neurons survive but also to kill them, resulting in worsening disability. In all approaches above it will be vital to understand this process.

The stats* on spinal cord injuries in Australia are very sobering:

• Total number of people living with a spinal cord injury over 15 years of age is upwards of12,000
• Total number of incidences in Australia yearly is over 300 (for persons over 15 yrs)
• 1 SCI a day of which 80% are male and most likely age at injury is 15–24 yrs
• The economic cost of spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury in Australia in June 2009  was $2 billion. Adjusted for 2019 this is now over to $3 billion per annum.

*(all statistics supplied by SCI Australia)