Here are some other reasons why I don't buy a ticket to China: Receiving the treatment could exclude me from future clinical trials. Clinicians running studies have strict criteria regarding who they can include, so they typically want the purest patient they can find, i.e., one that is "normal," so they can be sure any results they see are due specifically to their treatment. Having had fetal cells implanted in my spinal cord would not qualify as normal.

And what if something goes wrong? I don't want to risk being permanently dependent on a Ventilator again to breathe for me (I now need it only at night). Plus, I don't have 20 grand lying around. Why put myself in debt for something that won't make me independent?

But many injured people, particularly the newly injured, treat their predicament as a challenge to their machismo. In 2004, Texan Van Golden told the Guardian that although he's against abortion, some good should come from all those aborted Chinese fetuses. "Everyone else offered only to help make me sufficient in that chair," he said. "But the chair is not my destiny. It is not ordained." He reports after the Huang procedure that he's got feeling in his fingers he didn't have before. Later he compares some of that regained feeling to needle sticks. Other patients have also reported that much of their newly acquired sensation is pain.

When I hear stories like that, which are far too common, I remember that waiting for the right treatment is not the same as giving up or letting paralysis win.

Why Huang continues to offer a procedure that doesn't seem to do much good is a mystery. He apparently has good intentions. His father was partially paralyzed by a stroke when Huang was 17. In 1999, he came to the United States to study under Wise Young, a spinal cord injury expert and stem cell researcher at Rutgers University. Huang hoped to one day offer patients something no one gave his dad -- hope.

Time magazine reported in 2004 that after Huang's father became paralyzed following a stroke, "The doctors treated the teen with scorn when he asked for information. Says Huang: 'I decided then that I would become a different kind of physician.'"

After his stint in the United States, he returned to China in 2000 and began treating

patients in 2001. His home country's more lenient regulations, as compared to those in the United States, allowed him to immediately use what he'd learned. He has since treated over 500 people suffering from spinal cord injuries, none of whom have gained full or substantial recovery.

"Any improvement is a bonus," Huang told the Technology Review in 2005. Maybe. But if patients are disqualified from promising clinical trials after having undergone Huang's treatment, or if they're suffering more afterwards, maybe not. In that same story, Huang also cautioned that no one should expect a full cure as a result of his current procedure. I hope those considering this treatment listen carefully to the doctor's words of wisdom.