Andy Grove's Last Stand
Kerry A. Dolan 01.28.08, 12:00 AM ET

The former Intel chief, now battling Parkinson's, is on a crusade to speed
progress in treating the disease. Can he make a difference?

Andy Grove noticed an occasional tremor in the index finger of his right
hand. it was 1999, when Grove was 63 and had just stepped down as the chief
executive of chipmaker Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ). His physician
dismissed the twitchy digit. A year later another doctor nudged him to see a
specialist in movement disorders. "She had me close my eyes, put my head in
my hands, and count backwards from 100 by sevens," says Grove.
The doctor told him he had Parkinson's disease. "It didn't mean much to me,"
he recalls. "I didn't know anyone with Parkinson's." His younger daughter,
who had accompanied him to the appointment, nearly fainted. A physical
therapist, she had worked with Parkinson's patients who were homebound and
unable to feed themselves.
Andrew Grove, a man who survived the Nazis, the Communists, scarlet fever,
prostate cancer and Bill Gates to run what was briefly one of the world's
five most valuable companies, is saddled with a disease that will eventually
rob him of control over his body. But before it debilitates him, Grove is
going to fight. Over the past eight years Grove has immersed himself in the
minutiae of the disease and has used his money and his stature to agitate
for more and faster research on the neurology of Parkinson's. "You can't go
close to this and not get angry," says Grove. "There are so many people
working so hard and achieving so little."
Grove, who is worth an estimated $400 million, has committed $22 million to
Parkinson's research and pledged a $40 million bequest to the Michael J. Fox
Foundation for Parkinson's Research, to which he is an adviser. "There's
500,000 Andy Groves out there, and 500,000 Michael J. Fox's. Whatever is
good for me is going to be good for a large constituency," he says.
Inspired By Illness
Other rich and famous folk have been inspired by their own medical
conditions, or those of a child or spouse, to move mountains, usually
without much success. Actor Christopher Reeve put the spotlight on spinal
cord injuries after he was paralyzed in 1995 in a riding accident. Reeve
died in 2004, and there is still no cure for spinal cord injuries. CBS News
anchor Katie Couric inspired more people get colonoscopies following the
death of her husband from colorectal cancer in 1998. Still, only 40% of
adults aged 50 to 64 have had a colonoscopy.
Grove is by training a scientist and a boss. With the research he funds,
Grove demands regular updates, challenges assumptions and asks for new
experiments. His goals are characteristically both pragmatic and audacious:
to push the research and set an example of more goal-oriented projects that,
even after he's gone, others can continue.
Slowly, he is changing--or at least provoking--minds inside the biomedical
establishment. In early November, speaking to a room of several hundred
people at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego, Grove
roundly criticized research funding at the National Institutes of Health,
the unwillingness of researchers to share data and the lack of urgency in
translating basic science into treatments that can help people. "What is
needed is a cultural revolution that values curiosity, follow-through and a
problem-solving orientation and also puts the data being generated in full
view, scrutinizable by all," Grove said during the speech.
Some people would say "amen" to all that. Some wouldn't. "The human body is
a lot more complex than silicon," said a professor of biomedical engineering
and radiology at Columbia University after Grove's speech. Derek Lowe, a
veteran pharma researcher with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry, called Grove
"Rich, Famous, Smart and Wrong" in his blog.


Grove, 71, coined the metaphor "strategic inflection point" to describe the
moment when an industry or company changes its trajectory. Is it time for an
inflection point in neurological research?
Grove has had as many inflection points as one life could stand. He fled his
native Hungary in 1956 to embark on a career in the U.S. After earning a
Ph.D. in chemical engineering, he abandoned the field for the more promising
emerging area of electronics. He was employee number one at Intel. In 1984
he and Intel cofounder Gordon Moore decided to abandon the memory chip
business that gave the company its start for what became a dizzyingly
successful string of microprocessors. He also morphed personally--from a
drill sergeant fab manager to industry visionary.
In 1995 Grove was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He set about meticulously
researching various treatment options and the survival odds of each one
before undergoing a relatively new radiation therapy. So far the cancer has
not reappeared. He was happy with the treatment but not so happy with what
he learned about the slow pace of medical research on the disease. He used
his case to draw attention to the matter.

So, too, with Parkinson's. The drugs approved to treat it address only the
symptoms: rigid muscles, loss of balance, slow or uncontrollable movement.
Eventually, patients reach a point at which those drugs stop working. There
are no blood or urine markers for the disease; neurologists diagnose it by
asking questions and observing.
Parkinson's affects at least 1 million Americans and another 5 million
people around the world. It results from a loss of cells in the brain that
produce a chemical messenger called dopamine, which coordinates movement.
Parkinson's itself doesn't kill people, but patients with advanced cases die
of complications such as injuries from falling and pneumonia. Some with it
live for decades, but their quality of life can deteriorate dramatically.
Many suffer from exhaustion and depression.
Grove initially shared his diagnosis with only the Intel board and a few
colleagues and friends; it became known to the public only in a 2006
biography by Richard Tedlow. "I did not want to become a poster child for
yet another disease. I was so sick of being the first and last contact for
prostate cancer," he says. "Cancer you don't see. This thing [Parkinson's]
makes me look like an old man, and I 'm a vain guy."

Rayilyn Brown
Board Member AZNPF
Arizona Chapter National Parkinson's Foundation
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