# Michael J. Fox and his meds **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 24, 2006, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769 "2006-10-24T22:32:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![What\_the](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f4b2a3/32.png) [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2006, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/1 "2006-10-24T22:32:15Z")
Seems that there is a controversy re a political ad that Michael J Fox did regarding stem cell research. In the ad, the symptoms of his disease are prominent and compelling. Its been alleged that in his book he admitted to not taking his medication when he wants to dramatize his desease during political hearings. Did he in fact say that? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2006, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/2 "2006-10-24T23:10:11Z")
Someone would have to read through the book in question (I assume that what you’re talking about is Fox’s autobiography, _Lucky Man: A Memoir_) to find out if he actually made such statements. The [references](http://psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/53/10/1332) I happened to find to Fox’s comments in the book about timing his meds are the other way around, though: it says that he would time the medication in order to appear asymptomatic during public appearances or socializing. > [@](#): > > A substantial part of the book describes Fox’s efforts to remain “closeted,” that is, to hide from others the fact that he had a neurological disorder. He would time his medication to be able to “perform,” be it in front of an audience or with peers. [Similarly](http://www.carldpatterson.com/2006/04/), > [@](#): > > In September 1998 Michael announced that he had Parkinson’s disease. A neurological disease of which there is still no known cure. A disease whose first sign, in Michael’s case, was a slight trembling of his right hand. But what the world didn’t know was that he had managed to keep his disease and it’s symptoms a secret for seven years. […] The book does centre on the affects of Parkinson’s disease in one so young :- the drugs, the symptoms, how it has affected his family and how and why he kept it a secret for so long. Parts of it do read more like a thriller than the biography of an actor. Michael had to time his medication so that the shaking had stopped before he was due on the film or TV set. I don’t see anything startling about the idea that he might time his meds to hide his symptoms in some situations (e.g., when he needs to play a movie or TV character who doesn’t have Parkinson’s disease) and reveal them in other situations (e.g., when he needs to show the audience for a hearing or an ad what the symptoms look like). You sound as though you think it’s kind of scandalous, though. ---
**Author:** ![SailBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/77aa72/32.png) [@SailBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SailBunny)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/3 "2006-10-25T00:17:13Z")
On the E True Hollywood Story, He makes a speech in front of (forgive me) some vaguely important looking Washington DC hearing, ie senate/congress, during which he does not take his medications in order to argue for stem cell research. He is tremoring so badly, that he barely makes it through the speech. It was really hard to watch. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/4 "2006-10-25T01:27:49Z")
From [The New Republic](http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank?pid=51219) > [@](#): > > Fortunately, I have access to this thing called the Internet and this nifty search engine called Google. A few clicks led me to William J. Weiner M.D., professor and chairman of the department of neurology at the University of Maryland Medical Center. He’s also director of the Parkinson’s clinic there. > > Even better, it turns out Dr. Weiner has a phone. When I reached him, he said he’d seen the ad earlier in the day and was fairly surprised to hear about Limbaugh’s reaction. Here’s why: > > What you are seeing on the video is side effects of the medication. He has to take that medication to sit there and talk to you like that. … He’s not over-dramatizing. … [Limbaugh] is revealing his ignorance of Parkinson’s disease, because people with Parkinson’s don’t look like that at all when they’re not taking their medication. They look stiff, and frozen, and don’t move at all. … People with Parkinson’s, when they’ve had the disease for awhile, are in this bind, where if they don’t take any medication, they can be stiff and hardly able to talk. And if they do take their medication, so they can talk, they get all of this movement, like what you see in the ad. > Weiner was careful to disclose that a researcher in his center recently received a grant from the Fox Foundation. But he assured me that he was on solid medical ground. I take him at his word, but I’ll try to get some further confirmation later. ---
**Author:** ![JimOfAllTrades](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@JimOfAllTrades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JimOfAllTrades)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/5 "2006-10-25T06:03:02Z")
> [@](#): > > What you are seeing on the video is side effects of the medication. He has to take that medication to sit there and talk to you like that. … He’s not over-dramatizing. … [Limbaugh] is revealing his ignorance of Parkinson’s disease, because people with Parkinson’s don’t look like that at all when they’re not taking their medication. They look stiff, and frozen, and don’t move at all. … People with Parkinson’s, when they’ve had the disease for awhile, are in this bind, where if they don’t take any medication, they can be stiff and hardly able to talk. And if they do take their medication, so they can talk, they get all of this movement, like what you see in the ad. From what Fox wrote in his book, this doesn’t seem true for him. He describes in several places how his symptoms are the uncontrolled shaking and movements, and how the medication lets him control (at least partially) those movements. He does say at one point he was almost frozen except for one arm flapping around, but generally he describes his symptoms as uncontrollable movements, which the medications mitigate. I don’t know if in the campaign add he was or was not medicated. But it is true that he deliberately did not take medication when he appeared before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee in September 1999, and that information is in his book, Lucky Man. I have the hardback edition published by Hyperion, copyright 2002, ISBN 0?7868?6764?7. On pages 245 to 248 he describes his experience of testifying before the subcommittee. He describes his nervousness about the situation, for while it had been a year or so since he had revealed to the public that he had Parkinson’s, this was the first time he had been in public to advocate a specific course of action. It seems he wasn’t really comfortable speaking out, as he felt his opinion wasn’t any more important than anyone else’s. But he had been convinced that he could use his celebrity status as a means to get their voices heard. From page 247: > [@](#): > > As Joan\* and I left the corridors of power we must have looked like a pair of drunken sailors; the day’s hectic events had brought our symptoms to full boil, and both of us were a little wobbly. But something else was going on with Joan – I noticed she was fighting back tears. “Am I missing something?” I said, baffled. “I thought we did pretty well back there.” > > “Oh, it was fantastic,” she said. “It’s just that it’s always been so hard to get anyine to even _listen_ to us, never mind invite us _into their offices_.” She flashed me a smile. “It’s a whole new world.” > > Snippets of my testimony were featured on several of the nightly news broadcasts. One line in particular from my prepared statement got a lot of play: “In my forties, I can expect challenges most people wouldn’t face until their seventies or eighties, if ever. But with your help, if we all do everything we can to eradicate this disease, when I’m in my fifties I’ll be dancing at my children’s weddings.” I had made a deliberate choice to appear before the subcommittee without medication. It seemed to me that this occasion demanded that my testimony about the effects of the disease, and the urgency we as a community were feeling, be _seen_ as well as heard. For people who had never observed me in this kind of shape, the transformation must have been startling. \*Joan Samuelson, an attorney and founder of the Parkinson’s Action Network, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in the late 1980s at the age of thirty-seven. I must say that I started the book with misgivings. I thought it could easily be just another Hollywood star who thought that since he was involved in something, it gave them some special insight or knowledge beyond other people in similar situations. I was pleasantly surprised that Fox seems pretty humble. He seems to understand his star status has as much to do with luck as talent, and that without other people who helped along the way, he never would have had any kind of big success. He also seems almost embarrassed about suddenly being a “poster boy” for Parkinson’s, but freely admits that if he can use his celebrity for a good cause, he’s be a fool not to do so. All in all, I enjoyed the book, and gained a bit of respect for Fox in reading it. ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/6 "2006-10-25T06:16:25Z")
I don’t think it’s too scandalous, but it is certainly misleading and dishonest. If you are arguing for stem cell research, you should be comparing it to traditional treatment not to no treatment at all. On the one hand legislators need to have personal experience of meeting people who have the diseases in question, but on the other hand I think it is low-brow in general to parade sympathetic (such as celebrity and child) patients in front of lawmakers. But I guess we’re now rubbing up against the non-purgeable faults of our legislative process. Politics wouldn’t work even if Michael would take his meds. ---
**Author:** ![A.R.Cane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@A.R.Cane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A.R.Cane)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/7 "2006-10-25T06:53:45Z")
I really don’t understand the premise of this thread, or the controversy over the ad. The man has the disease. Should he try to lessen the symptoms for the purpose of the ad? Is it not compelling to see what the disease can do to a sufferer of it? Why is there any controversy to begin with? Because some greedy, lardass, babbling buffon decided he wanted to put a conservative spin on the ad? There is overwhelming testimony, by respected medical researchers, that demonstrates the value to society of fetal stem cell research, yet some conservatives want to stop that reaearch because of their extreme views about the possible potential for human life. Fox suffers fron a disease, he’s exercising his first amendment right to free speech, he happens to be fortunate enough to attract some attention. If the bombastic buffon were able to make a compelling commercial for the republicans, and he could profit from it, he’d have done it already, but nobody’s going to have any empathy for a greedy, self indulgent, drug abuser. Get a life, if you get suckered into this, made up, controversy you’re being duped! ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/8 "2006-10-25T07:23:19Z")
> [@](#): > > Should he try to lessen the symptoms for the purpose of the ad? Is it not compelling to see what the disease can do to a sufferer of it? The point is that we have treatments. He can’t just stop using those treatments and go on tv and say “vote for stem cells.” If stem cells were the only way of treating these diseases, and if everyone who had those diseases looked like Michael J Fox without meds… the debate would be a whole different animal entirely. However, that is not the case. That’s the point. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/9 "2006-10-25T07:51:06Z")
[QUOTE=RJKUgly] From what Fox wrote in his book, this doesn’t seem true for him. He describes in several places how his symptoms are the uncontrolled shaking and movements, and how the medication lets him control (at least partially) those movements. He does say at one point he was almost frozen except for one arm flapping around, but generally he describes his symptoms as uncontrollable movements, which the medications mitigate. [/QUOTE] Couldn’t the symptoms have progressed in the four or five years since the book was written? ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/10 "2006-10-25T10:04:27Z")
Almost certainly his symptoms have progressed. Parkinson’s is a progressive disease. It’s a also a disease whose symptoms can vary, either with or without medication and its side effects. Shaking/moving and immobility are both symptoms, and they can vary over the course of a day, due to stress, and probably other factors. It’s no more or less dishonest for Fox to show or not show his symptoms than for, say, a woman with aritificial legs to show or not show them with her choice of clothing. I don’t object to him making a point: this is what this disease looks like. ---
**Author:** ![Billdo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/billdo/32/315_2.png) [@Billdo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billdo)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/11 "2006-10-25T11:53:37Z")
My grandmother had severe Parkinsons. Though she died many years ago and (I hope) medical treatments have improved significantly since then, what was striking was the apparent randomness of her symptoms. Her condiditon would would vary from very stiff to heavily shaking from the changing state of the interactions between the drugs, the disease and I don’t know what. ---
**Author:** ![SailBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/77aa72/32.png) [@SailBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SailBunny)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/12 "2006-10-25T12:10:07Z")
Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disease. Medications for PD, If they are effective, do not continue working indefinitely, and they do not halt the advance of it. Some of the side effects of the drugs would send the rest of us running for the doctor. It would almost be silly for him to be in an Ad, “look how horrible Parkinson’s is, we need stem cells!..well you can’t tell how bad it is because I took all my pills this morning, but i swear, its really bad!”. I think that would be deceptive, and it wouldn’t move people in the slightest. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/13 "2006-10-25T12:13:26Z")
[QUOTE=Alex\_Dubinsky] The point is that we have treatments. He can’t just stop using those treatments and go on tv and say “vote for stem cells.” If stem cells were the only way of treating these diseases, and if everyone who had those diseases looked like Michael J Fox without meds… the debate would be a whole different animal entirely. However, that is not the case. That’s the point. [/QUOTE] It hasn’t been proven that Fox DID time his medication for the TV show. Some of us just don’t believe Rush. ---
**Author:** ![MizGrand](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cdc98d/32.png) [@MizGrand](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MizGrand)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/14 "2006-10-25T12:30:27Z")
The whole point of his addressing Congress without taking his meds was that he wanted them to see the damage this disease can cause for those not as fortunate as he. Not everyone can afford the massive amounts of meds and the brain surgery he has undergone. If he’s again allowing people to see him unmedicated, there’s certainly an angle, and, knowing what I do of MJF, it would be for good reason. I cried openly during several segments of the THS on him. This was a man I honestly **loved** from afar. Alex P. Keaton was IT for me some twenty years ago. I’d have given anything to meet him personally. Tracy Pollan was a lucky woman, now she’s a solid woman. I feel horribly about his disease and can’t even imagine my reaction should the disease take his life. I LOVED THIS MAN - he just didn’t know it. He’s taken/taking this disease by the horns, and making people aware of the horrid disintegration of mind/body control. He’s allowed EVERYONE to see him at his most vulnerable and deprecating himself in the process. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if people are afraid of/disgusted by stem-cell research. If it has even the remote possibility of helping MJF - I’m all for it. Even by breeding embryos in petri dishes simply for their cells. Until there is a mind involved, a petri dish is just a petri dish. His actions were/are well considered and not only self-serving. LEAVE MY MAN ALONE! ---
**Author:** ![RTA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b4bc9f/32.png) [@RTA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTA)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/15 "2006-10-25T12:42:50Z")
> [@A.R.Cane](#): > > Why is there any controversy to begin with? Because some greedy, lardass, babbling buffon decided he wanted to put a conservative spin on the ad? I have to agree; the “controversy” appears to be the counter-spin of desperation. Outside of the narrowing spectrum of dead-enders that Limbaugh’s comments target, there is no controversy. It’s very similar to how there was no controversy about how the media propped up Donovan McNabb because they wanted a black quarterback to succeed. No reasonable person was even thinking in those terms. Then Limbaugh opened his Oxy-hole about it and everyone says, “no, no, that’s really not how it is, at all.” All of a sudden, there’s a “controversy”. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/16 "2006-10-25T12:54:09Z")
[QUOTE=Alex\_Dubinsky] The point is that we have treatments. He can’t just stop using those treatments and go on tv and say “vote for stem cells.” If stem cells were the only way of treating these diseases, and if everyone who had those diseases looked like Michael J Fox without meds… the debate would be a whole different animal entirely. [/QUOTE] You have a good point, but it’s also important to understand that even with the best treatments we have today (of which MJF is partaking), the symptoms are never fully under control for even a whole day. What MJF did was to consciously decide to have some of his “shakey time” while the whole world watched, not alone in his kitchen, clutching the back of his chair and crying in frustration. Even with medication, there is at least one time a week like that, and, as the disease progresses, one time a day, then one time an hour. He didn’t exagerate symptoms, he simply shared the symptoms that still exist, even with medication, so people could see what he and other patients usually try to hide in the bathroom stall at the office. Might stem cells provide a treatment that will give 24 hour relief, or even a cure? I don’t know. But let’s stop pretending that the medication we have now does so by hiding our sick people away and ignoring the symptoms they have when we’re not looking at them. ---
**Author:** ![liberty3701](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3d9bf3/32.png) [@liberty3701](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/liberty3701)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/17 "2006-10-25T13:01:35Z")
Some people have already brought this up, but it cannot be stressed enough: After a few years of treatment, Parkinson’s drugs do very little and can even cause harm. My father has had PD since I was born, 25 years ago. Like Fox, he had an early onset, and I can tell you, his drugs don’t seem to do a damn thing. If he takes his meds, he’s dyskenetic (has jerky, uncontrollable movements) and can’t even talk. If he does take his meds, he’s dyskenetic and can’t talk. If he takes too much, he freezes (bradykenitic). There are some drugs (Valium and a anti-viral medicine whose name I forget) that will get rid of his dyskenisia but totally knock him on his ass. I heard that Fox used the anti-viral medicine when he was still acting because it worked very well for him. The point is, with any person who has had the disease for as long as Fox, I don’t think you could tell for sure whether he was off or on his meds. And if that’s true, does it even matter if he was? Here’s the wiki site for [levadopa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-dopa), a common PD drug. Look at the adverse affects. In the long run, these drugs do nothing but harm the patient, but right now, it’s the best we’ve got. ---
**Author:** ![A.R.Cane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@A.R.Cane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A.R.Cane)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/18 "2006-10-25T13:19:50Z")
That piece of garbage limbaugh is the only one I’ve heard questioning this, he even stated that Fox was “acting” in the ad. Why would any reasonibly intelligent person listen the that jerk, let alone believe anything he says. I saw an interview w/ Fox a few months back, he told the interviewer that he had timed his meds. so as to be as stable as possible for the session, but he was still moving around alot. He said that on some days the meds. work better than others. Again, where’s the controversy. If you’re against fetal stem cell research, then that’s the argument, not attacking Fox for speaking his mind. It’s a classic case of attacking the messenger, because you don’t like the message. ---
**Author:** ![spazurek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b2d939/32.png) [@spazurek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spazurek)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/19 "2006-10-25T13:40:02Z")
[QUOTE=WhyNot] Might stem cells provide a treatment that will give 24 hour relief, or even a cure? I don’t know. But let’s stop pretending that the medication we have now does so by hiding our sick people away and ignoring the symptoms they have when we’re not looking at them. [/QUOTE] Exactly. There’s a key concept in neurology about the difference between ‘symptomatic’ treatment and ‘disease-modifying’ treatment. Because the nervous system has so little capacity for self-repair, most of what we have to offer to victims of neurological disease is nothing more than a better quality of life in the initial phase of their inexorable decline. MJF was able to keep his symptoms under control in the past (and as the doc quoted above pointed out, that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore). But that didn’t do squat for his prognosis. We need more than symptomatic treatment, and it’s going to take some radical advances in medicine, one of the most promising being stem cell transplantation. Let’s say, worst-case, that MJF could have chosen be totally symptom-free in front of that camera with the right drug coctail. Know what? He’s still screwed until a disease-modifying treatment comes along. So if he elected to amplify that point a bit, well, god damn good for him. ---
**Author:** ![Wee\_Bairn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90db22/32.png) [@Wee\_Bairn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wee_Bairn)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769/20 "2006-10-25T14:38:49Z")
I don’t think it’s dishonest, what he is saying is, this is the disease I have, and here is what the disease looks like. Sure, his meds control it to a degree, but stem cell research could possibly eradicate the disease entirely, which means he would not have the disease and would not need drugs to control it, either. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-j-fox-and-his-meds/377769.md?page=2)