The Rabbits of Research, The Frogs of Alzheimer’s

• Aging
• Alzheimer's
• biotech
• compassion
• Curing Alzheimer's
• Dementia
• Telocyte
• Telomerase

Perspective often shrinks personal problems.

Late Sunday night, I received a cry for help from a woman whose mother has Alzheimer’s disease: she asked me to meet her family and offer professional advice. Their concern was not only her medications, but the ability of her physician, the stress on the family, and the patient’s own medical and psychological problems. Not surprisingly for someone with Alzheimer’s, the patient not only had paranoia, depression, panic episodes, and confusion, but the heart-rending loss of memory and reasoning that really lie at the heart of Alzheimer’s – if Alzheimer’s can be said to have a heart, which is a stunning oxymoron for such a horrifying disease.

We each have our own problems and – such is human nature – we get wrapped up in those personal problems, losing sight of greater issues. I had been thinking about a dozen issues that play into any biotech effort: potential investors, vendor specifications for plasmids, approaching the FDA for pre-IND meetings, conference calls with our IP attorneys, details of our preclinical research, and whether or not one of our scientific advisory board members had time to define a sequence for us. Amazing how large these – and many more – issues loomed in my life, then suddenly became so much smaller and less important when I heard from someone whose loved one has Alzheimer’s. It’s true that the only lasting way that my colleagues and I can help her – and hundreds of thousands of others – is to complete the research and offer a cure, but there is much more to helping than curing. Sometimes, it’s simply a matter of small acts of compassion, such as finding a referral to someone who can help with day-to-day problems, even if they can’t cure the deeper problem itself. And sometimes, of course, it’s simply a matter of understanding how unimportant our own problems are, in perspective.

Two thousand five hundred years ago, a story teller described the panic of a group of frightened rabbits who, in turn, suddenly surprise a group of frightened frogs, whose panic sends them into the pond. Aesop was right about human life: there will always be rabbits, there will always be frogs. No matter how much the “rabbits” of research need our attention and our hard work, the “frogs” of Alzheimer’s patients must always have our care and our compassion.

And, perhaps quite soon, we will change those frogs into healthy humans, whose fear becomes a thing of the past.