CNN Special: Michael J. Fox Talks to Sanjay Gupta

markinson's it's like you're crossing the road and you get stuck in the middle and you know the bus is coming and you can't get out of the way so you can kind of freak out you gotta go that bus is gonna hit me at some point and even though you don't know how fast or how big there's so much we don't know about Parkinson's disease what exactly causes it for instance and why would someone at the age of 29 start to develop the symptoms no one knows but this we do know Michael J Fox is in many ways become the handsome face of Parkinson's did you know that he's had the disease for almost 19 years now what is his life like day-to-day and what is he planning on doing with the 200 million dollars he has raised through his foundation what can we all learn from him I'll tell you he doesn't do a lot of long interviews because he gets so tired nowadays but on this day he had a lot to say people and when I said I was gonna be interviewing you people were asking how's he doing and I don't again I don't want to in labor that but I but I'm just gonna you're doing okay yeah what I was gonna say was it did I prefer to Parkinson's in the affected side of my life as a gift and people are clearly dubious about that and and and can wonder how I can say that but but I quantify a qualified by saying it's a gift that keeps on taking for this gift because it's really opened me up to more kind of compassionate curious it risk-taking person and he's given me a chemist I wouldn't call the foundation my Magnus opus but it's definitely most important to have ever done and probably doing my line with a disease like Parkinson's with humidity for example what's happening and what are you experienced it has her own fame he has her own their own version I'm on and off that sue story my life is one of mine when a month example now I'm relatively on and in the course this interview I'll probably cheer towards being off I mean I'll try to correct that midstream with with medication but I sometimes get you sometimes I don't and sometimes my brain is more receptive to it and sometimes it isn't so you're trying to you know grab something and and if the brakes are off so to speak you yo you'll shake right now when you when you're moving like I see you're grabbing your your your left leg are you trying to tell your left leg not to move like is that is that something they're constantly thinking about her you just say you say whack-a-mole it's like it's like the arm will go I stopped the arm either and will go I said that on the leg will go across the leg it's gonna go somewhere so it's constantly moving it around until and then there'll be times I'm just stop and be still I mean right now for example if I wasn't talking with you if I was just sitting I'd be perfectly still is that is that the stress part of it or is up yeah that's just a again it's like there's stuff as far as it tells you want to pick up this glass it's firing to tell me that something is required to me here and mine and my mind can't tell my brain what it is when you wake up in the morning and is there a certain routine you have to go through um I mean you take your met at a certain time then or you're you you feel a certain way or what well it changes but for the most part I wake up I have I have a feature called dystonia which is a which is a rigidity a cramping and with me affects my feet so strangely enough the first time my wife often hears in the morning it's me clumping across the floor because I keep a hard pair of shoes right next to the bed and I wake up when I put them on and we leave the stiffness of the shoe kind of forces that feet to behave and then and then I wait you know probably about half an hour 45 minutes before I I mean I might take it half a pill just to get me started but might wait a couple hours to before I don't want my date requires me nights before I really kick in things like you know even you know tending to yourself brushing your hair brushing your teeth Timmy I did the equivalent of electric toothbrush without a necessity of a battery or a charger I just um put your hand in the yeah boy handle let it go um yeah I mean all that stuff again it's it's you just I'm just used to it I'm just used to it hey it's it's any of us I have whatever we face in our lives innocent we find ways to to deal and move forward if we don't it doesn't matter what you have the result is gonna be the same you're not gonna go forward you're gonna stagnate and then and it doesn't matter anyway you know right now we're in an extraordinary situation I mean I don't sit down for interviews every day and surprising that may seem people as sick of seeing me but but um it's a it carries with it a certain amount of stress around how congenial own and when willing my participation is I mean it's gonna it's gonna you know say what my wife is driving and the car comes close and I go out this and she says I'm a good driver and I say it's not you driving it's not my mind is telling me this problem is my brain did you just call Tracy a bad driver no I Tracy good drivers now let's take a look at how this all started every morning as long as I remember I wake up in the morning I saw where to go I get something to do probably gonna do tomorrow when the alarm goes out it's hard to believe it's been more than a decade since Michael J Fox left the sound stage of his hit TV series Spin City in a final curtain fell Fox had first publicly disclosed his Parkinson's diagnosis two years prior the long hours on set were catching up with him exacerbating the symptoms of his disease stress of doing the show um he's kind of next factor and it's gonna be interesting to see that removed from from the scenario and see what see what effect that has Fox's decision to step away from the cameras was a dramatic change for a man who practically grew up on screen launching his television career in the early 70s in his native Canada small film roles led Fox to Hollywood and soon America came to know him as the young Republican Alex P Keaton on the popular sitcom Family Ties selfishness saved my life I knew he'd come in handy at its peak family ties drew in a third of American households every week Fox's work on the series won him three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe it's also where Fox met his future wife actress Tracy Pollan I sort of compliment the couple has been married for 22 years they have four children Fox's TV success propelled him to movie stardom with the blockbuster trilogy Back to the Future Part II yeah Fox followed his role as Marty McFly with more than 20 films yes what they tell me but it was on the set of the movie doc Hollywood where Fox first displayed symptoms of early Parkinson's disease which eventually pushed him into a new role that of advocate the war against Parkinson's is a winnable war and I have resolved to play a role in that victory Fox works tirelessly in his quest for a cure for Parkinson's fighting for funding campaigning for politicians sympathetic to his cause his support for stem-cell research and the quest for a Parkinson's cure has at times sparked controversy despite using his celebrity to point the spotlight in a different direction Fox hasn't left Hollywood behind completely with numerous guest appearances on TV series in recent years Fox is still a familiar face and a line from his final episode of Spin City still rings true it's gonna be okay get bounce back from this of course Mike time to be up over right it's a long way from over and coming up the moment when Michael J Fox learned his life was about to change forever it's nice not like a silly question but are they sure you have Parkinson's my national state is Brady community radio kinetic and halting in Kremlin and tell you to the point where I'm I have no movement at all that's that's what my brain wants to do because that's the condition that it's in so so I don't fool myself I take advantage of the time when I medicated and look at as a gift and as an opportunity to make that time even wider by by finding work substantial treatment or cure was some people's Parkinson's at his cognitive element and I and I just sometimes get concerned about that when I have recall issues and stuff like then oh my wife is crooked tell me I'm almost 50 years old and that's why isn't this nice I'm like a silly question but are they sure you have Parkinson's I'm yes tunics Tampa but Parkinson's isn't is this umbrella I mean parkinsonism I mean in many ways I have textbook Parkinson's in other ways i I have the idiosyncratic aspects to my experience I for example I'm so tremendously sensitive to l-dopa and in over time with a lot of patients it's it's if a FNC wears off it it doesn't it isn't it isn't as good a tolerance to get here and also it comes to terrible dyskinesia which which I do experience but not to the extent that I could but your experiences your experience it doesn't you can't you can't push it out to fill a box that song else was created for it and you can't and you can't shrink it to squeeze into it took a parenthetic notation that someone's made about it it's your experience um it's it's I'm pretty sure that I have Parkinson's but what is Parkinson's and the medication is is a precursor to dopamine which is the neurotransmitter that's in short supply yeah a particularly your brain so you're taking this pill right you're a lot of titrating there's a lot of there's no set it isn't like for me where I wake up in the morning I take two pills in the ten o'clock Bell goes off I take two pills and total clock a bell goes off a take two pills it's constant feeling at titrating and sometimes they'll take a half a pill sometimes to take a quarter of a pill it all depends on what kind of cocktail I had brewing in my brain that day no he explained to me that sometimes his mind may want to do one thing but his brain sort of takes control causing many of the symptoms you just heard him talk about now medically speaking Parkinson's disease is actually pretty straightforward when you think about it what you have is a particular part of the brain that produces a chemical known as dopamine helps us with motor skills specifically smooth muscle movements but the brain of someone with Parkinson's disease isn't producing enough dopamine and why that happens exactly is anyone's guess but the disease does get progressively worse and as things stand right now doctors can only treat the symptoms typically with the pill that looks like this it's called levodopa and it's the single most effective treatment to control symptoms let me give you a little bit of an idea of just exactly how this works now what you have here is the pill going into the bloodstream and subsequently it goes to the brain where it is converted into dopamine but here's the problem when the pill starts to wear off the symptoms come back sometimes or even worse and that all continues until the next pill is taken eventually you can develop a tolerance to this medication as well though there is some help some progress really in trying to minimize that it's sort of think of it like sort of a gel version of this particular medication it's called dua dopa and what happens is the drug gets released via tube directly into the small intestine and patients can monitor their levels much in the same way that a diabetic does with insulin and be alerted before the symptoms get too severe now this is currently in the clinical trial stage for approval in the United States but already approved for use in 34 other countries surgery there's also an option for patients not responding well to medication and the most common nowadays is something known as deep brain stimulation and I want to give you just a little bit of an idea of how this works it blocks abnormal nerve signals that cause Parkinson's symptoms by implanting a battery-operated device about the size of a stopwatch and sending electrical stimulation which essentially blocked the abnormal signals from ever reaching the brain Michael J Fox had an operation back in 1998 during his operation which was called a thala madami Michael was actually awake he was actually talking to his surgeon so I said make my making handshake and and I tried to I couldn't and I felt this disappointment that I couldn't I couldn't you know give him what he wanted but then I ate and I said I can't and he said we're done and I was like wow operation was over because they did yeah it's the goal Nate helpers ago what you know which was early on from you so it's just it was just about cessation and I had a big tremor in my left side fully on my left had nothing on my right and so my whole life you know working in and stuff was about manipulating circumstances so that I could pin that arm in her hand her pocket or in my pocket were busy it was something because it that that helped and anybody just got too much so that's when I had the brain surgery and then of course I had brain surgery in it and it it diminished the effects of on my left side but just this true to progression of the disease with a few months my right side started huh and I made the decision not that I take have another brain surgery but I don't be labor the labor the point but if they said to you look it's not curative but with stimulation we can no dial it up dial it down with magnets and possibly really alleviate some of your symptoms why not do that Michael J Fox had surgery 12 years ago on the right side of his brain which controls the left side of his body the problem was the right side of his body slowly became worse after that and has progressed over the years he told me pretty candidly about his decision to avoid any more operations well I don't believe it the labor the point but if they said to you look it's not curative but with stimulation we can you know dial it up dial it down with magnets and possibly really alleviate some of your symptoms why not do that just a personal thing um next time they go into my brain I wanted to be to get it done I don't I don't want it I don't want it to be I mean we were joking about the book one year hits your brain well yeah I know they already hit my brain too many times I wanted to yeah if there's some something uh that they can do in there that will be curative or restorative or how progression or in any kind of much more fundamental way than just a kind of mechanical stopgap I'm kind of a pacemaker which is what they have now um hi this is my personal preference but it's been a tremendous people's lives or the hundreds of people I'd met and certainly thousands and had the procedure deep brain stimulation it's it's been you know huge the improvement the people they couldn't want people it fit I had a hard time functioning that I was having a full it a movement because it's it's it's kind of D syncopated that the firing in their brain your doctors when they they federal with your medications they try different things it would what is the is there a overall plan other they say Michael look we'll just keep fiddling you know indefinitely here or they saying look at some point you know look at it we gotta take a next big step or we you know think you need to do X I mean what do they tell you your aides if it's about getting being me come from being functioning function on a day-to-day basis and in a naturally fancy it's about my comfort and then because we there is that big next thing I mean the surgery potentially but again I'm more weighing that I tend to lean against it because you don't want to drew doing our surgery unless there's greater promise let's brain surgery how a brain surgeon sign up for Brandi I'm brain surgeons love it but I'm in and so and so yeah actually there's you know maybe something will come through the pipeline that did the changes they changes a picture but for now I'm I'm not perfectly I can eat if I don't affect the last twenty years you told me this were I'd be twenty years from now after my diagnosis I would I would taking this in a heartbeat I'm very happy with my life ever had with what I'm able to do and what I'm able to accomplish um it's not ideal but it's so he beats a lot of other option you know a few years ago many people including Michael were hopeful that stem cells are gonna be one of those options why don't you talk about stem cells as much anymore ten years ago Michael J Fox started the foundation that now has his name to find a cure for Parkinson's the foundation is now embarking on a major research project they're looking for biomarkers for Parkinson's it's interesting because it a biomarker some sort of signal that the disease gives off whether it's a protein or something in the body I can serve a few different purposes perhaps like in the case of Alzheimer's it can give you some early clue that someone either has a disease maybe doesn't have symptoms yet doors going to develop the disease but it may give you some more insight into the zero point it gives you a starting point you can't if you if you even attracted the depression of the disease in a patient now you have to wait till he's symptomatic a favored biomarker you can you can you can track that from its earliest stages you say what is gonna be the trigger here it's gonna not only the trigger that's in it it's gonna eradicate symptoms your whole progression but what's the trigger that caused it to start if we have you know it's it's um uh it sees often said it that with Parkinson's um genetics loads the gun and the environment pulls the trigger um just something they did I mean put why it has no one in my family ever had Parker says it's not necessarily we don't all have the genetic risk it's that I ran into whatever that that trigger was um and these are things we worry about when they talk about some of the most uh potentially effective therapies and you've talked a lot about this um stem cells is something still comes up why don't you talk about stem cells as much anymore well it was an urgency in the moment um we did vote coming up in 2006 I mean the simple fact is that patients have the right to insist that the federal funders and an industry pursue anything that's likely to find an answer to find a cure we you know their ethical questions we went through them we were doing forever beside the reasonable people disagree I happen to think that in the case of eggs embryos left over from in vitro fertilization that they were going to be destroyed anyway why don't help but that's another issue I think that I think just the basic idea of stem cell science it's it's part of our portfolios part of the things we pursue bliss but by no means the majority of of the of the avenues route we're going down but to shut off any possible in road to to a cure or breakthrough just hidden make no sense and especially when attached to a political agenda how important is Michael J Fox to this how important are you to this mission why I think me personally I think I I serve as a as his head cheerleader and and perhaps I put a face on it for people at her experiencing it I mean that I don't want to underestimate that because I know when I first disclosed that I was dealing with this I got an email from a lady who who were going into this local store in and she just assumed that the purse man that kind of thought she was drunk is she she had in ragged movements and he kind of dealt with her breast Glynn and then she went in after I hey he kind of disclosed and and he in he's even looking at her she said I have Parkinsons and he said oh Michael Fox so I mean that that everything that really touched me I mean because because the talk about the patient experiencing we very lonely experience and so if you feel like there's somebody who's getting up in the morning and is on it you know I just cures don't fall out of the sky they don't know we have to go up and get them and we just assume okay Alec I think I always assumed those a Department of cures that there was a minister of cures secretary of cures but there isn't it's us such an important point the secretary that cures he's talking about there so many unknowns in this disease and how close are we finding some of the answers well joining me now are two of the leaders in treating and researching Parkinson's disease doctor Walter Kerr shuts he's deputy director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke dr. Bernard Raveena associate chief of neurology at the University of Rochester he's also researcher with the Michael J Fox foundation thanks for joining us thank you he's doing so well you know he really had a lot to say obviously but he did point out as well that there's so many unknowns we don't know what causes this the treatment for this hasn't changed a lot over the last several years and at one point he says you know just diagnosing him at such a young age you're looking assured that he had Parkinson's disease dr. veena is that part of the reason that is so difficult to to make progress here it's true there are multiple factors that may contribute to causing Parkinson's disease and certainly in people who have early onset or young onset Parkinson's disease the it can be much more difficult to make a diagnosis because there are several other diseases that may be suspected or that you need to rule out first he has the disease I mean he I guess are the things that can sort of mimic it especially in he was diagnosed had symptoms of 29 was diagnosed at 30 are there other things I did this could be well I think there are a number of disorders that cause the generation in the same brain areas and they produce a very similar phenotype the distinguishing features to Parkinson's disease I think the one the one that is the most distinguishing is that they patients respond to the medications in the early stages yeah where many of the other diseases are not responsive so this ability to respond to dopamine agonists is usually the cut point that makes you feel certain that someone has Parkinson's and he says he clearly responds to it he clearly has benefit from taking the dopamine which is which is what is deficient in the brain in some of the Parkinson's he talked a fair amount and obvious the foundation very interested in biomarkers um first of all tell us a little bit about what biomarkers are and what why is this so important as we as we move forward or biomarkers are characteristic or something that can measure that tells you about the underlying disease process so not the symptoms but what's causing the symptoms a good example is being able to measure blood sugar and diabetes it helps you make the diagnosis and it also helps figure out if people are responding to the treatment in Parkinson's disease we really don't have biomarkers that tell us what the underlying disease is doing in the brain and it's a little bit more challenging because the measures that we're interested in are in the brain so it's not necessarily quite as simple as getting a blood test so there's something that might be that you can measure that tells you that someone first of all has Parkinson's and and a specific target for a medication as well right well I think that's that's really the key in my mind the biomarker significance is is a measure that you can target with a drug or therapy that increases the probability that you're gonna respond to that therapy 5-year study $40,000,000 several countries around the world that's right this is a this is one of the first large-scale international effort to develop biomarkers that will tell us about the progression of Parkinson's and as walter was saying exactly the point the goal here is to be able to use these biomarkers to help develop drugs that will slow the progression so if we can use them to get a read on whether or not the drugs are really hitting that process we can really move that process along more quickly a couple things we don't have a little bit of time left but stem cells was something that Michael J Fox talked used to talk a lot about he doesn't talk as much about it why not is there is there less promise there there was a lot of enthusiasm dr. Avena look I don't know that there's less promise certainly it's a controversial issue but I think what's key in Parkinson's that we pursue multiple different avenues to treatments stem cells may work but there are also other ways that we can go about addressing the the progression I think the thing to know is that the genetics has really opened the door because it isolated a defect in a protein called synuclein in a particular family that got Parkinson's and that opened the door because what we found after that was that everyone with Parkinson's has the synuclein problem and it occurs in the in the brain and in the nerves way before you get the symptoms so now you know we know kind of what we might be able to go after to get a little forerunner correct gives you a little prediction I think we can all agree on this I mean he is he is the eternal optimist yeah I mean in that book always always looking up yeah he does call himself an incurable optimist and when we return he's gonna explain why he also calls Parkinson's disease a gift stay with us Michael J Fox calls himself an incurable optimist and he called Parkinson's a gift a gift that keeps on taking as he put it it's not surprising he was skeptical when doctors told him the tremors that began when he was just 29 years old were signs of Parkinson's it's a disease that typically strikes people after the age of 50 did you believe them when they told you no I said that they're crazy hey I felt bad for the doctor afterwards because I I was uh yeah I mean I was I was she's funny now but but I I was indignant I was like no I made a mistake let's say not only because I was young but because um my life had been so charm to that point that um that I thought this this has to be some kind of error but as I pursued second opinions and third opinions Amy became clear that that was the situation it would do me what you told them you told the doctor that doctor shoppers you had other doctors or what it what did you do yeah I did I went I went I like I saw the original doctor diagnosing doctor and I saw a couple of the prominent you know huh you're all just with any worries it wasn't the kind of movement disorder especially that there is now for surely people that focused on Parkinson's but not in the way to do now but I saw and I finally ended up with the big market mountain won't mix his name but he was a quite an esteemed neurologist and and he was very Bruskin pretty dismissive when I first came in he said not you too young and I thought oh this is good this guy's a little bumpy but he can we get to the truth here and then I did sure enough he finishes his examination and said no ye apartment I've had so many patients I see them in the office and you know sometimes I tell them news it's not great and one things they understandably ask is why me and obviously there's not an answer to that question but did you ever ask yourself why you were no man why I want you it's not me my first response was ed and she's a mistake as we talked about earlier um but no I didn't know I didn't get there I I I did go through a long period of okay denial about it and hiding it in wondering what was gonna happen how fast was gonna happen but there was a real clear period around 1993-94 for two years after diagnosis where I just got it I just accepted it and I realized that you know there's a never old saying that my my happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance and an inverse proportion to my expectation if you know it's just about it this is what it is and in so now on there's a once you once you were not in denial you think you were happier yeah absolutely because when you when you can look at the truth of something then then every I mean it that's that's what it is is what it is now you have options anything I don't have a choice about it's whether I have Parkinsons everything else is my choice and that's incredibly liberating that's much more liberating than the physical constraints of this disease are limiting are as are the things that you particularly miss that you you can't do I mean things that you say god I really just wish I could do that still I'd really know did you everything I do i do anything i hain't ever did before um yeah no I'm play hockey I play golf I play guitar I have my kids I mean that's that's if it seriously limited or restricted or virtually affected my ability to react with my kids I think that would now be something that would be hard to deal with I go back to my reasons for for starting this foundation if you I use this analogy a lot but it but it's really apt if you step off a curb and get hit by a bus the impact in your life is immediate and catastrophic and you have no option student you just if the effect of whatever happens there if with Parkinson's it's like you're crossing the road and you get stuck in the middle and you know the bus is coming and you can't get out of the way so you can kind of freaked out on you gotta go that buses gonna hit me at some point and even though you don't know how fast and how big or whatever but you can be stuck in that result that this bus is gonna hit you or you can use the time you have for the bus gets there try to change the route and and in and that's what we try to do you know methodically but with with with three virgin see try to connect the dots and get this done and coming up why Michael J Fox has thrown vanity right out the window Oh Bret it was great everything was great that was Michael J Fox obviously and back to the future shock 25 years ago can you believe it there's still no time travel there's no flying DeLoreans and there's no cure for Parkinson's you know vanity goes out the window very early once you kind of accept this and and you decide to move forward with it in and in react positively it said to realize it doesn't matter what you look like that is what you can get done what you knew but at each girls all across the world had your picture up on their walls yeah that's right well now I get teenage daughters and ripping pictures of guys after their walsim vanity goes out the window but you baby I mean what you mean by that is that this isn't about how you look it's about trying to move the mission forward right exactly and and I'm really excited about him again with the foundation in ten years we've been able to to funnel us somewhere near two hundred million dollars it that's that's incredible number two hundred million dollars and I've seen to the funding budget set they're large organizations including the National Institutes of Health twenty million dollars can get things done yeah we were definitely we're definitely having an impact and when I come in came into this I am I am Society obtained and lack of experience in these kind of things so I can make broad sweeping for announcements and in order objectives and then kind of go go back and go away and hope hopefully they'll be carried out and they were like I didn't want this to be a bank I didn't want to said to to have a heads-down Minh one of the money to come in and go out order to speed up research and in have an option for researchers that were onto something whether it was a a big question or just a little question might help to solve the next bigger question but get them funding as quickly as possible and and we were able to do that and then expand into other new areas of philanthropic research and um it's it's been an amazing experience you've described your life as being front-loaded meaning you you know you accomplished a lot of things or very early in life and I read your books you are so optimistic and and and it's not to say that you shouldn't be but but what is there a lesson there for other people what what keeps you so optimistic it's just like be in the moment it's like there's no more important moment than right now and and I think that you not I say to my wife sometimes if you if you get caught up in the worst case scenario and in it in and it doesn't happen you've wasted your time and if you are caught up in the and it does happen you've lived it twice you know there's no there's no it's okay to be prepared and to be informed and to know what the future may bring but but it's also important to celebrate right now what you can do right now and coming out Michael J Fox tells us what he sees in his future and also the future of his foundation what do you see an actor and athlete how about two people who share a common illness no different than the millions of others with Parkinson's disease look again you'll see two people who won't stop fighting until there's a cure I'm still being complete let me come back now when when when mama dolly hit you did that hurt ya know what her was uh we did it we did a promo and I said he said no I thought he was and then I said I'm five five and he said five five my my foot as it has a bigger blow what do they say is the progression for you of Parkinson's what is the thing I mean what I love about my doctor is is there is there is no predictable path again so I could be looking for milestones and on some course then I'm projected to go down and I could miss milestones they did their tell me I want another have it really is a day-to-day thing so there's no there's no there's no point on the journey where you get to a place in it that triggers these options for these contingencies it really isn't like that that's all I mean they don't you don't have the morose more morose conversations about lifespan or my a morose conversation with anybody about anything by a good thing yeah always looking up oh he's looking out personally if you got if you have mice you don't have rats they're funny told me that if you have my seat and I Brad is the rat to kill the mice so if you have mice it's a good sign I want to occupy a lot of times I can do things I do for times when I can't but it's it's I go I go on the UH I go on the SEC had gone and I'm a terrible golfer and I started going from my 40s with Parkinson's so if that isn't optimism I don't know what is but but I just do what I want to do and and I just work with what I got well show up with that day and and and but that's that's me I mean again I'm I'm very lucky in a lot of ways what's the legacy of the foundation writing today well hopefully we'll accomplish our mission and and in some way uh facilitated a solution to this puzzle you know it's it's really soluble I you know the we we look at the things we've done um we've accomplished as a species this really it really seems doable it's just a matter of those of us that are affected by it and concerned about it you do what we can whether it's clinical trials whether it's supporting our foundation or other foundations or getting involved politically or whatever but just know that you have an impact on the course of events and and if you insist on something and you're willing to to give what you need to give in order to make it happen um you know this is Stillwell it's casual you know I spent over an hour and a half with Michael and I can tell you that optimism you just heard it's infectious and after the break we'll tell you how you can join the fight stay with us we know you're a big athlete a runner so if you run the marathon in it I urge you to run for team finds and I could see Michael was recruiting me there to join Team Fox he's pretty persuasive you know he joins athletes all around the country cheering them on for helping him find a cure to Parkinson's disease a lot of information was discussed this hour we want to put it all in one place for you to make it as easy as possible to get involved go to cnn.com / impact find links to learn more about Parkinson's sign up for the latest clinical trials or simply make a donation thanks for joining me tonight I'm dr. Sanjay Gupta more news on CNN starts right now you you

Channel: The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research

Views: 467,135

Keywords: The Michael J. Fox Foundation, Parkinson's disease

Id: la63uShbtsc

Length: 40min 4sec (2404 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2010