Word: parkinsonism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...going to get a serious disease--and, unless you'd prefer to die violently and young, you're probably going to--Parkinson's is not your worst choice. It is progressive and, at the moment, incurable. But, like its victims, it tends to move slowly. It is not generally fatal--meaning that there's enough time for something else to get you first. There is also enough time for a cure to come along, which might well happen if politics don't get in the way. And Parkinson's is fashionable these days. It's a hot disease, thanks...
...chose denial. If ever you're entitled to be selfish, I thought (and still think), this is it. So I see a good doctor, take my pills most of the time and go about my business. I couldn't tell you some of the most basic things about Parkinson's and how it works. Modern culture may favor confrontation, but we are genetically hard-wired, or at least I am, with a remarkable capacity for denial. It helps, of course, that the symptoms have been mild. Most days for the past eight years I've hardly given a thought...
Anyone who develops a chronic disease in mid-career dreads being written off--being thought of prematurely in the past tense. Three years ago, I was offered the editorship of the New Yorker. I told the owner I had Parkinson's and invited him to change his mind, but he generously said it didn't matter. A few hours later, though, he withdrew the offer with no explanation. I chose to believe him that the Parkinson's didn't matter. To withdraw the offer for that reason would be, among other things, probably illegal. But I also doubt that...
...goal is to make embryonic stem cells, the so-called starter cells that can turn into any sort of body tissue, from brain to bone to blood. In theory, stem cells might be used to treat any disease in which cell death is a factor: diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, paralysis, stroke and more. And while stem cells can be harvested from aborted fetuses, that source is abhorrent to abortion foes--which is one reason President Bush declared last summer that only those stem-cell lines already in existence could be studied with government funds...
...announced last week that it had cloned the first human embryo, Europeans greeted the news with a mixture of interest, suspicion and revulsion. Scientists are keen to explore cloning as a potential source of embryonic stem cells, which could be used to treat diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, but many question the validity of ACT's results...