CASE IN POINT: A chance trip to Cuba provides new hope for a man headed for life in a wheelchair.

TARNIE WILLIAMS, a technology entrepreneur and board member of YM Biosciencies, has multiple sclerosis. After many weeks at prestigious medical facilities, like the Whitaker Wellness Clinic in Newport Beach, California, his condition only worsened: the right side of his body was extremely weak. Mr. Williams began to give up hope: “They all said, ‘You’ll be in a wheelchair; you’ll just have to accept it‘”, he recalls.

AMr. Williams was resigned to that eventuality – until he travelled to Cuba for first time, for a YM Biosciencies board meeting. After seeing his condition, German Roges, a Cuban researcher, suggested he visit Cuba’s International Center for Neurological Restoration..

Three years later, after spending roughly one month a year in the center, Mr. Williams isn’t only walking without crutches, but his once semiparalyzed right side is almost fully regenerated.

Rather than giving Mr. Williams medication to fight the illness, which prevents the brain from communicating with other parts of the body, the doctors gave him intense physical therapy. “They’d put weights on my legs and lift them up and down for eight hours a day,” he says. “After a while, the legs started sending messages to my brain, and the brain caught on”.

Why couldn’t a North American clinic offer the same solution offered in Cuba, which is widely considered to be a third world country? “It’s mostly about economics”, says Mr. Williams. The center gave him a highly qualified specialist, with two years of training in kinesiology and two years in neurology for eight hours a day. “Even if they knew about this treatment”, he adds “No one in the States would find in feasible”. It definitely wouldn`t be feasible for a $ 2 500 consultation fee and $1 500 a week for six days a week of treatment – almost tenth of what Mr. Williams paid at the Whitaker Clinic. “But there’s really no price for health”, he says. Today, Mr. Williams can walk. --D.L.