This may be what it takes.
Peggy

Fox drives Parkinson's research back to the future

New York — From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Excerpted:
. . . optimism has defined Mr. Fox since he first went public about his illness in
1998, and Canadians will get a dose of it this week when he comes to Toronto to celebrate the fact that the Michael J. Fox Foundation now has charitable status in Canada.

It is at the heart of his mission to find a cure for Parkinson's by reshaping the way research is done.
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Many people remember Mr. Fox's very public battle with the Bush administration to permit research on stem cells (cells derived from human embryos that have the potential to turn into any kind of cell in the body). They may be surprised to learn that today his foundation, in the words of one board member, has reappraised how that research realistically relates to Parkinson's and is focusing on other areas.

But that's typical of the group's aggressive, entrepreneurial approach to science. Staffed with neuroscientists and people with business experience, the foundation has spent more than $149-million (U.S.) on research so far.

The foundation demands that scientists share results and tools, and it closely monitors their work. But it also encourages them to take risks, devoting roughly $2-million a year to a rapid-response fund that gets money quickly into the hands of scientists who come up with new ideas.

In less than six weeks, a scientist can have the seed money to test out a hypothesis and see if it is worth pursing. Most of the time, it doesn't pan out, which is why government funding agencies prefer to support research that will lead to steady but incremental advances.

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“It will take a lot of time, but it's not time-neutral,” he says. “There is an urgency to what we are doing, and regardless of our developing understanding of the realities, we still aren't giving up the urgency.- Michael J. Fox