Woman's Brain Owned by castro

fidel castro, the self-proclaimed fighter for the people who "aims" for equality through communism, was angered when Forbes ousted him as one of the world's richest people (with a net worth of about $550 million). Hmm... I wonder how he "acquired" that fortune? Same way he owns everything else; he takes it:

HAVANA -- Hilda Molina says her brain belongs to her. Cuban authorities apparently think otherwise.

Molina, 62, claims a top immigration official gave her the word in 1997 and again in 2000: "You can't leave Cuba because your brain is the patrimony of the state."

Whether Molina's brain is hers may seem like a personal matter. So does the issue of whether she can travel to Argentina to visit her only child, whom she has not seen in 12 years, and meet, for the first time, her two grandchildren.

But Molina is no ordinary Cuban grandmother.

Once a leading physician, Communist Party member and national legislator, the physically slight but intense woman was a shining star in Cuban President Fidel Castro's effort to transform Cuba into a scientific power.

Castro personally backed Molina's effort to start a neurological rehabilitation institute, which under her guidance pioneered fetal tissue transplants and other treatments for patients with Parkinson's and other neurological disorders. But she broke with Castro more than a decade ago and became a harsh critic of Cuba's tightly controlled socialist system.

Since then, Cuban officials have refused to allow her to travel overseas, even to visit her son, Roberto Quinones, a 42-year-old neurologist who fled Cuba in 1994 to study abroad, and grandsons, Roberto Carlos and Juan Pablo, who are 10 and 4.

Continued on Sun-Sentinel.com...