Guest columnist Ben Grosscup: I’m going to Cuba to get a new Alzheimer’s drug for my mom

My dad took this image of my mom and me in June 2026, days before my mother received an early-stage dementia diagnosis, likely Alzheimer’s disease. I’ve always expected grief and devastation for families after this diagnosis. The drugs available in the U.S. don’t halt, let alone reverse, progression of this degenerative neurological illness.

But my research this summer into NeuralCIM — a Cuban drug commercialized earlier this year — has left me hopeful. I leave for Cuba on Sept. 15 and will return with a 48-week supply for my mom.

Clinical trials showed promising results for patients with mild to moderate dementia — with no major side effects. Of the 174 Cuban participants, 30% stabilized — their symptoms didn’t worsen after 48 weeks. That alone exceeds what U.S. Alzheimer’s drugs can do. But 54% saw measurable improvements sustained over successive annual check-ups. That’s unheard of in U.S. dementia care.

My family noticed changes in my mom’s thinking well before her diagnosis. But because the disease hasn’t progressed far, the worst impacts may yet be avoidable.

Given that 600,000 Americans become disabled from Alzheimer’s every year, it’s disheartening that more people don’t know about NeuralCIM.  But one Colorado physician— Dr. Bill Blanchette — is directing his Alzheimer’s patients to get this medication in Cuba. His staff told me 85 patients from his practice, Boulder Internal Medicine, have already done so. They aren’t taking any new patients, but did give me free advice on accessing NeuralCIM directly from Cuba’s La Pradera Clinic, which serves international patients. In interviews, Dr. Blanchette describes his collaboration with Cuban physicians, how he’s witnessed patients improve dramatically, and why colleagues in the medical community should take notice.

Why aren’t advances like NeuralCIM widely promoted in the US? Why aren’t US medical institutions conducting their own clinical trials now—and moving as fast as possible to make this treatment available to millions of families suffering today?

Part of the problem is geopolitics. The U.S. government is committed to enforcing a brutal blockade on Cuba. That policy began in 1960 after the Cuban Revolution, which from Washington’s point of view, turned the island nation into a geopolitical adversary. In January 2026, Trump cut off the flow of Venezuelan oil to this import-dependent country, triggering the worst humanitarian crisis Cuba has seen since before its Revolution. 

Cuba now lacks sufficient oil for basic services. The country suffers under rolling blackouts in sweltering heat. People can’t run refrigerators, fans, or stoves. They can no longer afford basic goods. Public transportation is crippled. Although the healthcare sector is highly prioritized for the scarce electricity that remains available, even hospitals can’t always keep the lights on. With rampant shortages, surgeries are being postponed.

Entrenched corporate interests are another impediment to NeuralCIM’s distribution in the U.S. US-based private equity firms are heavily invested in the multi-billion dollar dementia care industry. Cooperating with Cuba to help the U.S. population access drugs that reverse Alzheimer’s would simultaneously benefit Cuba’s economy while cutting into these firms’ profits. So instead, the U.S. policy inflicts needless misery on both populations.

This shocking inhumanity grinds on within a larger global order of organized cruelty. I witnessed this when I visited Iraq in 1999 on a peace delegation. I was just 18. At the time, the U.S. was strangling Iraq with sanctions designed to cause malnutrition and illness among the most vulnerable. The emaciated bodies of the starving children I saw in hospital wards revealed the essence of U.S. sanctions. I’ve been an activist against U.S. economic warfare ever since, but I never thought the welfare of my own mother would depend on the ingenuity and hospitality of the very nation my government was trying to destroy.

After years of successive U.S. administrations providing weapons and political cover for Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinians, it is now unmistakably clear that elites of both major political parties have normalized genocide as a way to resolve political conflict. Changing course requires a political rupture that forces U.S. institutions to fundamentally change priorities. 

Success would mean: U.S. healthcare organizations would license NeuralCIM technology and conduct expedited clinical trials here. U.S. Alzheimer’s patients could get affordable prescriptions from their own doctors without traveling thousands of miles. Cuba’s economy would stabilize, and its medical system would strengthen.

In contrast to the U.S. healthcare model, the socialist values at the heart of the Cuban system are about making the population healthier, not enriching a tiny few. Undoing U.S. imperial domination would open pathways for these humanistic values to be adopted here.

Thanks to Cuban ingenuity, I have hope for my mother. So long as U.S. Customs officials don’t stop me, I believe my mom will be OK.

So for now, I’m saving my grief, devastation, and solidarity for the people of Cuba — who are being subjected to unimaginable horrors by our government, in retaliation for having defended their revolution.

Ben Grosscup is an activist folksinger living in South Deerfield.