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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 [log in to unmask] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn