For significant progress to be made, do diseases need celebrity advocates, especially those who have suffered themselves?
I think that they either need celebrity advocates or they need a congressman who is interested in them. Or they need a large number of people affected who are willing to be advocates. I don’t want to wax rabbinic here, but this recalls a statement by Hillel, who said, “If I’m not for myself, then who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, then who am I? And if not now, when?” I think that people of prominence or great resources are the ones who act as catalysts in our society. They move the political establishment, and they move the money. So the truth is that that is the way it works. And it’s hard to blame them for it, because if you empathize and put yourself in that wheelchair or in that cancer ward, you’d probably do the same thing. And it does help. There was essentially no substantial funding of spinal-cord research before Reeve’s injury, and now it is one of the hottest areas in neurobiology. Scientists are flocking to work in it, because science follows the money. The ot
