Voice

Thank you — the crowdfunding has already received a great deal of support. Research funds matter, of course, and if the campaign succeeds I want to use them well toward understanding the pathology of Parkinson’s disease. I also hope it will be seen more widely that a small laboratory at Niigata University is doing this, and that some researchers — or quite a few — still struggle badly to raise money for intractable-disease research.

Research funding is, in outline, almost a matter of policy. Work the government is promoting — iPS or AI just now, perhaps, if I have that right — is funded generously, and because the total is fixed, everything else is cut. Who then receives a share is, in most cases, decided by senior scientists thinking hard. At the high end the success rate is around 25%; more often it is under 10%. PRIME, which has supported this laboratory, is 5–8%. Politicians, bureaucrats, reviewers: I think most of you are doing your best. That the system still is not working is also obvious if you look at the recent decline of Japanese science. If you have looked at the crowdfunding page, please think now and then about what policy would actually advance the research or the work you care about, and whom we should choose. Parkinson’s disease matters. Other diseases and disabilities matter too. Raise a voice, even a small one, if you want research on those, or some other effort carried out. Especially if you are in pain, or finding life hard: please get that feeling to someone. Common diseases, rare ones, many kinds of disability, children and older people, voices that can shout and voices that can only whisper, and thoughts that never become a voice — I want a world in which someone can still catch those.