The other is a hip-hop artist – a Queens native with an edgy, creative spirit that drives him to write songs, post blogs and develop his own distinctive web presence, all from his bedroom in Montclair.
On the surface it would seem unlikely that the two would know each other, let alone have a special friendship.
But Wise Young, a Rutgers professor, and Richard Gaskin, a Montclair man who goes by the moniker of ProfessirX, not only have a deep bond, but share a common purpose that taps each man’s particular talents to the limit.
“I talk to him everyday on Facebook,” Young said. “I go to his events and he comes to mine.”
“We do very different things,” Gaskin said. “But we do them for the same reason.”
Their common cause is the tragedy of spinal cord injury.
Young is the founding director of the W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience, the Busch Campus research lab dedicated to discovering, testing and developing treatments for spinal cord and brain injury.
Gaskin is one of the many who hang on to every discovery and breakthrough at the Keck Center. In 1987, he was shot in the neck at close range, a wound which left his legs and much of his upper body paralyzed. He gets around in a motorized wheel chair and needs assistance to bathe and eat.
Yet the relationship between Young and Gaskin is not one of healer and patient. They work side by side as activists. And they are currently pushing to establish the first clinical trials in the United States for therapies that may help people with spinal cord injuries recover some of their mobility.
Approximately 1.3 million Americans have spinal cord injuries, and 1 in 50 in the U.S. live with paralysis, according to the Spinal Cord Injury Network USA (SCINetUSA), which was founded by Young.
“This was unacceptable,” he said. “How far have we declined in this country that we have to send people to China to participate in clinical trials of therapies developed in the U.S.? It isn’t that umbilical cord blood cells and lithium are at all controversial. The only obstacle is money.”
The regard that Young holds for Gaskin’s role in this mission was evident during the Rutgers conference. Young broke from his keynote address to invite Gaskin up on stage, where he launched into his song “Just a Dollar Please” – which implores people to contribute even modest sums to offset the tremendous cost of holding trials.
The performance mesmerized the audience in the Busch Campus Center’s multipurpose room, and nearly $700 was collected on the spot.
“You would never think that going to a seminar, you’d have a rap song break out,” Gaskin said.
“We work together at every opportunity,” Young said. “When Richard performs for an audience, it’s an amazing sight; you look out in the crowd and everybody has memorized the words.”
The two became acquainted after the 2004 death of actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralyzed with spinal cord injuries after being thrown from a horse in 1995.
For Young, the loss was personal.
"I was very close to Christopher,” he said.
For Gaskin, who had never met Reeve, but had admired him from afar for his perseverance, the death was a shock that woke him up and set him on a path toward activism.
“When I heard he died, I thought: ‘This is real, people can pass away from this situation,’’’ Gaskin said. “I just lay in bed that day, in shock.”
But he eventually wrote a moving, hopeful song, “Forever Superman,” which he performed as a tribute to Reeve in Washington, D.C. at an event attended by his widow Dana Reeve. Young, who was also at that event, was inspired by the song.
“What I heard was a man with a very genuine voice who understood the need to express the same feeling of hope that Christopher had expressed,” he said. “I think Christopher’s death radicalized Richard.”
Young later took Gaskin to Hong Kong to show him the latest research. He has introduced him to New Jersey politicians, including three former governors, and campaigned with him for stem cell research.
Today, Gaskin is active on many fronts, writing songs, making personal appearances and running his organization, I Believe Inc.
In addition to his work as a scientist, Young also is very much an activist. He started CareCure Community, an online forum that provides the latest information and updates for the disabled community. But his most pressing mission is to establish clinical trials in the United States.
The cost of holding clinical trials – which includes admitting 240 people into the hospital; tests and treatments; and months of physical therapy – will be about $32 million. So Young and others came up with the JustaDollarPlease.org campaign, asking families and friends of spinal cord injured to give a dollar a day ($365 a year) and everyone to give whatever they can.
Gaskin wrote a song to energize the campaign. The accompanying video opens with a frustrated Young on the phone with a potential donor. Putting the phone aside he says: “ProfessirX, we have a millionaire who won’t donate a million dollars, what are we going to do?”
Gaskin then breaks into the song.
“The mindset was that we can’t get the government to fund it and we can’t find a millionaire to fund it,” Gaskin said, “So we say; let’s do it ourselves.”
