How
similar are Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease? When I did a search for the
two diseases recently, the first result led me directly to the Alzheimer’s Association.
Their website notes that Parkinson’s
disease
begins in a part of the brain that governs the realm of movement. And, in
December, Insightec, a startup bankrolled by Koch Industries, obtained $150
million in venture capital designed for both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s
research.
And in
the recent book “Seven Steps to Managing Your Memory: What’s Normal, What’s
Not, and What to Do About It,” authors Andrew E. Budson and Maureen K. O’Connor
note the difference between Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia, another
disorder which is sometimes mistaken for Alzheimer’s. The term “Parkinson’s
disease dementia” is sometimes used for this condition, according to the
authors.
One thing that Parkinson’s advocates have that people with
Alzheimer’s don’t is a true celebrity advocate who is living with the disease—Michael
J. Fox. Maria Shriver has spoken forcefully about her late father, Sargent
Shriver, a key figure in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, who died of
Alzheimer’s. But her message would have been even more powerful if the person
speaking was the one afflicted with Alzheimer’s.
In the fall of 2006, two weeks before the midterm
elections, Fox emerged as a powerful advocate for stem-cell research to help
people with Parkinson’s. After all, Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s at age
29—at least 20 years before early-onset Alzheimer’s typically begins. In an effective commercial shortly
before the midterm elections, Fox, visibly shaking, stated that Jim Talent, the
Republican candidate for the Senate in Missouri, wanted to “criminalize the
science that gives us hope.” (That election would give the Democrats control of
both the Senate and the House, and helped position Barack Obama as a viable
candidate for president two years later.)
I’ve learned that after all these years, Fox is still doing
fairly well. A photo taken about a month ago shows him playing a guitar at his
annual fund-raising gala. According to one website, a reason that Fox continues
to play guitar is that he is still living a somewhat normal existence.
Parkinson’s “is not a nebulous cloud of doom that hangs over my head,” Fox
stated. “It’s a set of challenges, and there are rewards in meeting those
challenges.”
Fox was recently interviewed by Jane Pauley, and by the
end of the session, Fox himself was in tears. “Because it reminded me how much
they mean to me,” he said, referring to a 34-year-old mother of three he had met
who had none of the advantages that Fox himself has, thanks to his wealth. “We
don’t want anything ridiculous—we just want a cure,” Fox stated.
Sound familiar?
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