Working 2 Walk 2012

This book is proof that you don't need a PhD in neurobiology to understand the science that will lead to a cure for spinal cord injury. Kate Willette has taken a complex subject and turned it into a good read. Using the 2012 version of the annual conference known as Working 2 Walk (W2W) as a framework, she's created a lively, plain-English narrative that makes it possible to see exactly where the research is right now.

Working 2 Walk is a gathering that brings all the players into the same room. Scientists get out of their labs and meet people in chairs face to face:

"I came away more motivated than I have been in years, and made some connections on the science side of things. I have been raving about it to anyone who will listen. I hope to be there next year, and I want to bring some people from my lab as well – they need to see this!" Murray Blackmore, PhD

People affected by paralysis come to learn how to become part of the solution:

"This is my third year to attend W2W. My son was paralyzed at 16 in 2010. I look forward to hearing from year to year how the scientists are progressing in their research, and meeting with others in similar situations as ours. This is amazing!" Lorie Rockstroh-Smith

Strategists come from spinal cord injury foundations all over the world to make connections, see the new science firsthand, and plot a way forward:

"We're talking about the researchers, the advocates, the family and friends, the funders . . . as stakeholders we really need to understand what motivates each other. We need to understand what frustrates each other, and we have to understand where the gaps are. Once we've identified those gaps and understand our resources, I think we can then maybe identify ways that we can overcome them." Mark Bacon, Director of Research, International Spinal Research Trust, UK

The AIDS community is often held up as the best example of a patient population that figured out how to advocate for themselves and the people they loved. In the film, "How to Survive a Plague," the man who was Director of AIDS Research at the National Institutes of Health (Dr. Anthony Fauci) offers this comment about those advocates: "They elevated themselves by their own self-education on these things. And then it became very clear that you weren't going to mess with these people, because they knew exactly what you were talking about -- and they knew exactly what they were talking about."

One goal of Working 2 Walk -- and the primary goal of this book -- is to get as many people as possible to be like those AIDS advocates, knowing exactly what they're talking about. We want to be people you can't mess with. People with spinal cord injuries have a key role to play in making the science go faster, but it's hard to do that without a basic understanding of how it works and what the holdups are.

What makes this book special is that it delivers that basic understanding with such clarity and humor. Kate Willette clearly enjoys the challenge of bringing readers into the room with some of the best neurobiologists in the world; she has a knack for providing just enough context to follow every twist and turn of the very latest experimental failures and successes.

Working 2 Walk 2012 is simply outstanding . . . but then so was the conference itself.