<p>Feb. 7, 2008 (DailyMail)- A breakthrough in spinal surgery yesterday offered hope to victims of paralysis. The technique, which has been tested on rats, involves bypassing damaged tissue in the spine.</p> <p>This allows signals to travel across injured areas, New Scientist reports.</p> <p>Dr John Martin and his colleagues at Columbia University in New York have so far tested the procedure only on rodents. They selected a motor nerve branching from the healthy cord above the injury and cut it away from the abdominal muscle to which it is normally attached…</p>