Opinion: Michael J. Fox: As a Parkinson’s patient, I felt a little left behind by biology’s century — until now
Michael J. Fox celebrates the discovery of a biomarker that can detect dysfunction in the protein that goes haywire in Parkinson’s disease.
Last fall in STAT, Matt Herper questioned whether the biomedical research enterprise is really laying the necessary groundwork to gain the full benefit of innovation in “biology’s century.” “The biggest looming problem is that… new technologies in biology [could] outpace our ability to assess them,” he observed. “Our goal, as a society, seems to be to manufacture more and more sports cars and to drive them faster and faster into the mud.”
Mike Milken has used a similar metaphor for systemic challenges in research: Building high-speed trains won’t get you far unless you also lay the specialized tracks they require. Over the past couple of decades, the Michael J. Fox Foundation has been working to address just the biomedical research challenges Matt wrote about.
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