Planet Patient vs Planet Researcher – from both sides now (by Frank Church)

This thoughtful blog was written by Frank Church, as a follow-up on Simon Stott’s ‘rebuttal’ of my blog ‘Planet Patient vs Planet Researcher’

About Journey with Parkinson'sFrank Church: Medical school and undergraduate biology educator, biomedical science researcher and part-time golfer. My diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease, combined with my career in science and education, allows me the ultimate “teachable moment”. The theme of this blog is my journey with Parkinson’s. The overall goal of this blog is to give encouragement, along with information and other resources, to anybody with Parkinson’s.

About his website: A blog for Parkinson’s education, research advances, new treatment strategies, and personal reflection: the goal is to provide support and information/resources to anyone either with Parkinson’s disease or with any neurodegenerative disorder.

Frank Church writes:

“I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.” Wayne Dyer

“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” Voltaire

Setting the Stage:

Planet Patient vs Planet Researcher (click to read)”- In a recent blog post entitled ‘Planet Patient vs Planet Researcher”, Mariëtte asks an important question: “are we really so very different, we patients and researchers?” As an active and informed advocate for Parkinson’s, her answer was yes.  She listed and described 10 points of differences between patient and researcher.

Planet Researcher to Planet Patient (click to read)“- In a separate follow-up blog post entitled “Planet Researcher to Planet Patient”, as the Parkinson’s researcher, Simon thoughtfully replied to the 10 points highlighted by Mariëtte.

“The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.” Anton Chekhov

“Planet Patient vs Planet Researcher: From Both Sides, Now”: As I read these blog posts, they had a tremendous impact on me.  Both were deeply personal, they spoke with passion, and well-intended thoughts.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading both posts by Mariëtte and Simon, respectively.

It dawned on me that I could also reply to Mariëtte’s 10 points with the viewpoint of both inhabitants, Planet Patient (since I have Parkinson’s) and Planet Researcher [since I have been in academic medical research for 36 years in the area of hematology-oncology (furthermore, very recently, we have started studying Parkinson’s and our beginning success rate has given us 1 funded proposal in 5 proposal submissions over the past 18 months)]. I reasoned that a dual-reply might offer some additional insight to support and reinforce the opinions of both Mariëtte and Simon.

Read the full blog on Frank’s website, Journey with Parkinson’s