After I was raised as a little college grad, I then went into post grad education to make me more "marketable". I then went out into the bigpaharm world and was going to cure "Something". I had faith in them. The team. But just like that movie "The Firm", I slowly realized that there would be no practical application to my best thought out plans, only resistence. I was not there to help "cure" anything. I could never understand why all the good ideas whithered on the vine.
I think that MJF saw this light too, when he saw "good work" from his "people", but nothing tangible ever coming from it. Why? what was/is going on? Money, that's what's going on. In the halls of research, the idea is to produce science, just make products that only marginally "useful" to the world, all the while making good researchers "just do there jobs" and "be productive". IT has been noticed by many on this board that the years go by with nothng being resolved. The world makes it's living from the labors of young healthy people, who only care about how large their paycheck is this month. I have given up trying to understand why we see the end of our suffering delayed to the point of hopelessness for many of us. THe stem cell debates have been burning for decades now. WE've seen this as an impediment to the search for a cure. WE even have seen remarkably promising procedures like GDNF infusion get tossed into the garbage can. We've seen nothing really new and effective come our way. If i sound defeated, it's because I am.
IT's easier to be hopeful at the start of PD, when dopa works well and you feel like PD is only "bothersome", not an all pervading, life destroying, horrible condition, where one welcomes a reprieve from it and it's ugly menacing tentacles that destroy ourselves , our families, and the immense human will to survive.
PD is as bad as cancer, AIDS or any of the other diseases that slowly consume the human spirit. I'll stop now, with my apologies to those who still have fight left in them. cs