Word: parkinsonism
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Taken from embryos only days old, stem cells are nature's blank slates, capable of developing into any one of the more than 200 cell types found in the human body. Scientists hope these cells may someday be used to treat a range of degenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes. But using human embryos for research poses ethical problems, and until last year federal funding for such work was blocked. After much soul searching, President Bush decided last summer to allow federal grants for research that used only the 60 or so stem-cell lines that have...
...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...
...Parkinson's is the disease most likely to be cured by stem-cell research, which is enmeshed in controversy. As I wrote in TIME a few months ago, you can't really criticize people whose reason for opposing research that uses embryos is that they truly believe embryos are fully human beings. But you can criticize politicians who try to escape this yes-or-no dilemma with calls for compromise or delay or prestigious panels to study the situation and report back in a few months. Can't they hear that sound of clocks ticking? Tempus fugit, assholes...
...discovered since Sept. 11, the news is a lot more interesting when your life may depend on it. So that's another little plus of having Parkinson's disease. I don't delude myself that the pluses add up to equal the minuses. Though I may give that...