Researchers Behaving Badly: Known Frauds Are "the Tip of the Iceberg"
Disgraced stem cell researcher and celebrity surgeon Paolo Macchiarini.
Last week, the whistleblowers in the Paolo Macchiarini affair at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet went on the record here to detail the retaliation they suffered for trying to expose a star surgeon's appalling research misconduct.
Scientific fraud of the type committed by Macchiarini is rare, but studies suggest that it's on the rise.
The whistleblowers had discovered that in six published papers, Macchiarini falsified data, lied about the condition of patients and circumvented ethical approvals. As a result, multiple patients suffered and died. But Karolinska turned a blind eye for years.
Scientific fraud of the type committed by Macchiarini is rare, but studies suggest that it's on the rise. Just this week, for example, Retraction Watch and STAT together broke the news that a Harvard Medical School cardiologist and stem cell researcher, Piero Anversa, falsified data in a whopping 31 papers, which now have to be retracted. Anversa had claimed that he could regenerate heart muscle by injecting bone marrow cells into damaged hearts, a result that no one has been able to duplicate.
A 2009 study published in the Public Library of Science (PLOS) found that about two percent of scientists admitted to committing fabrication, falsification or plagiarism in their work. That's a small number, but up to one third of scientists admit to committing "questionable research practices" that fall into a gray area between rigorous accuracy and outright fraud.
These dubious practices may include misrepresentations, research bias, and inaccurate interpretations of data. One common questionable research practice entails formulating a hypothesis after the research is done in order to claim a successful premise. Another highly questionable practice that can shape research is ghost-authoring by representatives of the pharmaceutical industry and other for-profit fields. Still another is gifting co-authorship to unqualified but powerful individuals who can advance one's career. Such practices can unfairly bolster a scientist's reputation and increase the likelihood of getting the work published.
The above percentages represent what scientists admit to doing themselves; when they evaluate the practices of their colleagues, the numbers jump dramatically. In a 2012 study published in the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, researchers estimated that 14 percent of other scientists commit serious misconduct, while up to 72 percent engage in questionable practices. While these are only estimates, the problem is clearly not one of just a few bad apples.
In the PLOS study, Daniele Fanelli says that increasing evidence suggests the known frauds are "just the 'tip of the iceberg,' and that many cases are never discovered" because fraud is extremely hard to detect.
Essentially everyone wants to be associated with big breakthroughs, and they may overlook scientifically shaky foundations when a major advance is claimed.
In addition, it's likely that most cases of scientific misconduct go unreported because of the high price of whistleblowing. Those in the Macchiarini case showed extraordinary persistence in their multi-year campaign to stop his deadly trachea implants, while suffering serious damage to their careers. Such heroic efforts to unmask fraud are probably rare.
To make matters worse, there are numerous players in the scientific world who may be complicit in either committing misconduct or covering it up. These include not only primary researchers but co-authors, institutional executives, journal editors, and industry leaders. Essentially everyone wants to be associated with big breakthroughs, and they may overlook scientifically shaky foundations when a major advance is claimed.
Another part of the problem is that it's rare for students in science and medicine to receive an education in ethics. And studies have shown that older, more experienced and possibly jaded researchers are more likely to fudge results than their younger, more idealistic colleagues.
So, given the steep price that individuals and institutions pay for scientific misconduct, what compels them to go down that road in the first place? According to the JRMS study, individuals face intense pressures to publish and to attract grant money in order to secure teaching positions at universities. Once they have acquired positions, the pressure is on to keep the grants and publishing credits coming in order to obtain tenure, be appointed to positions on boards, and recruit flocks of graduate students to assist in research. And not to be underestimated is the human ego.
Paolo Macchiarini is an especially vivid example of a scientist seeking not only fortune, but fame. He liberally (and falsely) claimed powerful politicians and celebrities, even the Pope, as patients or admirers. He may be an extreme example, but we live in an age of celebrity scientists who bring huge amounts of grant money and high prestige to the institutions that employ them.
The media plays a significant role in both glorifying stars and unmasking frauds. In the Macchiarini scandal, the media first lifted him up, as in NBC's laudatory documentary, "A Leap of Faith," which painted him as a kind of miracle-worker, and then brought him down, as in the January 2016 documentary, "The Experiments," which chronicled the agonizing death of one of his patients.
Institutions can also play a crucial role in scientific fraud by putting more emphasis on the number and frequency of papers published than on their quality. The whole course of a scientist's career is profoundly affected by something called the h-index. This is a number based on both the frequency of papers published and how many times the papers are cited by other researchers. Raising one's ranking on the h-index becomes an overriding goal, sometimes eclipsing the kind of patient, time-consuming research that leads to true breakthroughs based on reliable results.
Universities also create a high-pressured environment that encourages scientists to cut corners. They, too, place a heavy emphasis on attracting large monetary grants and accruing fame and prestige. This can lead them, just as it led Karolinska, to protect a star scientist's sloppy or questionable research. According to Dr. Andrew Rosenberg, who is director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists, "Karolinska defended its investment in an individual as opposed to the long-term health of the institution. People were dying, and they should have outsourced the investigation from the very beginning."
Having institutions investigate their own practices is a conflict of interest from the get-go, says Rosenberg.
Scientists, universities, and research institutions are also not immune to fads. "Hot" subjects attract grant money and confer prestige, incentivizing scientists to shift their research priorities in a direction that garners more grants. This can mean neglecting the scientist's true area of expertise and interests in favor of a subject that's more likely to attract grant money. In Macchiarini's case, he was allegedly at the forefront of the currently sexy field of regenerative medicine -- a field in which Karolinska was making a huge investment.
The relative scarcity of resources intensifies the already significant pressure on scientists. They may want to publish results rapidly, since they face many competitors for limited grant money, academic positions, students, and influence. The scarcity means that a great many researchers will fail while only a few succeed. Once again, the temptation may be to rush research and to show it in the most positive light possible, even if it means fudging or exaggerating results.
Though the pressures facing scientists are very real, the problem of misconduct is not inevitable.
Intense competition can have a perverse effect on researchers, according to a 2007 study in the journal Science of Engineering and Ethics. Not only does it place undue pressure on scientists to succeed, it frequently leads to the withholding of information from colleagues, which undermines a system in which new discoveries build on the previous work of others. Researchers may feel compelled to withhold their results because of the pressure to be the first to publish. The study's authors propose that more investment in basic research from governments could alleviate some of these competitive pressures.
Scientific journals, although they play a part in publishing flawed science, can't be expected to investigate cases of suspected fraud, says the German science blogger Leonid Schneider. Schneider's writings helped to expose the Macchiarini affair.
"They just basically wait for someone to retract problematic papers," he says.
He also notes that, while American scientists can go to the Office of Research Integrity to report misconduct, whistleblowers in Europe have no external authority to whom they can appeal to investigate cases of fraud.
"They have to go to their employer, who has a vested interest in covering up cases of misconduct," he says.
Science is increasingly international. Major studies can include collaborators from several different countries, and he suggests there should be an international body accessible to all researchers that will investigate suspected fraud.
Ultimately, says Rosenberg, the scientific system must incorporate trust. "You trust co-authors when you write a paper, and peer reviewers at journals trust that scientists at research institutions like Karolinska are acting with integrity."
Without trust, the whole system falls apart. It's the trust of the public, an elusive asset once it has been betrayed, that science depends upon for its very existence. Scientific research is overwhelmingly financed by tax dollars, and the need for the goodwill of the public is more than an abstraction.
The Macchiarini affair raises a profound question of trust and responsibility: Should multiple co-authors be held responsible for a lead author's misconduct?
Karolinska apparently believes so. When the institution at last owned up to the scandal, it vindictively found Karl Henrik-Grinnemo, one of the whistleblowers, guilty of scientific misconduct as well. It also designated two other whistleblowers as "blameworthy" for their roles as co-authors of the papers on which Macchiarini was the lead author.
As a result, the whistleblowers' reputations and employment prospects have become collateral damage. Accusations of research misconduct can be a career killer. Research grants dry up, employment opportunities evaporate, publishing becomes next to impossible, and collaborators vanish into thin air.
Grinnemo contends that co-authors should only be responsible for their discrete contributions, not for the data supplied by others.
"Different aspects of a paper are highly specialized," he says, "and that's why you have multiple authors. You cannot go through every single bit of data because you don't understand all the parts of the article."
This is especially true in multidisciplinary, translational research, where there are sometimes 20 or more authors. "You have to trust co-authors, and if you find something wrong you have to notify all co-authors. But you couldn't go through everything or it would take years to publish an article," says Grinnemo.
Though the pressures facing scientists are very real, the problem of misconduct is not inevitable. Along with increased support from governments and industry, a change in academic culture that emphasizes quality over quantity of published studies could help encourage meritorious research.
But beyond that, trust will always play a role when numerous specialists unite to achieve a common goal: the accumulation of knowledge that will promote human health, wealth, and well-being.
[Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly credited The New York Times with breaking the news of the Anversa retractions, rather than Retraction Watch and STAT, which jointly published the exclusive on October 14th. The piece in the Times ran on October 15th. We regret the error.]
Regenerative medicine has come a long way, baby
After a cloned baby sheep, what started as one of the most controversial areas in medicine is now promising to transform it.
The field of regenerative medicine had a shaky start. In 2002, when news spread about the first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep, a raucous debate ensued. Scary headlines and organized opposition groups put pressure on government leaders, who responded by tightening restrictions on this type of research.
Fast forward to today, and regenerative medicine, which focuses on making unhealthy tissues and organs healthy again, is rewriting the code to healing many disorders, though it’s still young enough to be considered nascent. What started as one of the most controversial areas in medicine is now promising to transform it.
Progress in the lab has addressed previous concerns. Back in the early 2000s, some of the most fervent controversy centered around somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the process used by scientists to produce Dolly. There was fear that this technique could be used in humans, with possibly adverse effects, considering the many medical problems of the animals who had been cloned.
But today, scientists have discovered better approaches with fewer risks. Pioneers in the field are embracing new possibilities for cellular reprogramming, 3D organ printing, AI collaboration, and even growing organs in space. It could bring a new era of personalized medicine for longer, healthier lives - while potentially sparking new controversies.
Engineering tissues from amniotic fluids
Work in regenerative medicine seeks to reverse damage to organs and tissues by culling, modifying and replacing cells in the human body. Scientists in this field reach deep into the mechanisms of diseases and the breakdowns of cells, the little workhorses that perform all life-giving processes. If cells can’t do their jobs, they take whole organs and systems down with them. Regenerative medicine seeks to harness the power of healthy cells derived from stem cells to do the work that can literally restore patients to a state of health—by giving them healthy, functioning tissues and organs.
Modern-day regenerative medicine takes its origin from the 1998 isolation of human embryonic stem cells, first achieved by John Gearhart at Johns Hopkins University. Gearhart isolated the pluripotent cells that can differentiate into virtually every kind of cell in the human body. There was a raging controversy about the use of these cells in research because at that time they came exclusively from early-stage embryos or fetal tissue.
Back then, the highly controversial SCNT cells were the only way to produce genetically matched stem cells to treat patients. Since then, the picture has changed radically because other sources of highly versatile stem cells have been developed. Today, scientists can derive stem cells from amniotic fluid or reprogram patients’ skin cells back to an immature state, so they can differentiate into whatever types of cells the patient needs.
In the context of medical history, the field of regenerative medicine is progressing at a dizzying speed. But for those living with aggressive or chronic illnesses, it can seem that the wheels of medical progress grind slowly.
The ethical debate has been dialed back and, in the last few decades, the field has produced important innovations, spurring the development of whole new FDA processes and categories, says Anthony Atala, a bioengineer and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Atala and a large team of researchers have pioneered many of the first applications of 3D printed tissues and organs using cells developed from patients or those obtained from amniotic fluid or placentas.
His lab, considered to be the largest devoted to translational regenerative medicine, is currently working with 40 different engineered human tissues. Sixteen of them have been transplanted into patients. That includes skin, bladders, urethras, muscles, kidneys and vaginal organs, to name just a few.
These achievements are made possible by converging disciplines and technologies, such as cell therapies, bioengineering, gene editing, nanotechnology and 3D printing, to create living tissues and organs for human transplants. Atala is currently overseeing clinical trials to test the safety of tissues and organs engineered in the Wake Forest lab, a significant step toward FDA approval.
In the context of medical history, the field of regenerative medicine is progressing at a dizzying speed. But for those living with aggressive or chronic illnesses, it can seem that the wheels of medical progress grind slowly.
“It’s never fast enough,” Atala says. “We want to get new treatments into the clinic faster, but the reality is that you have to dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s—and rightly so, for the sake of patient safety. People want predictions, but you can never predict how much work it will take to go from conceptualization to utilization.”
As a surgeon, he also treats patients and is able to follow transplant recipients. “At the end of the day, the goal is to get these technologies into patients, and working with the patients is a very rewarding experience,” he says. Will the 3D printed organs ever outrun the shortage of donated organs? “That’s the hope,” Atala says, “but this technology won’t eliminate the need for them in our lifetime.”
New methods are out of this world
Jeanne Loring, another pioneer in the field and director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, says that investment in regenerative medicine is not only paying off, but is leading to truly personalized medicine, one of the holy grails of modern science.
This is because a patient’s own skin cells can be reprogrammed to become replacements for various malfunctioning cells causing incurable diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, macular degeneration and Parkinson’s. If the cells are obtained from a source other than the patient, they can be rejected by the immune system. This means that patients need lifelong immunosuppression, which isn’t ideal. “With Covid,” says Loring, “I became acutely aware of the dangers of immunosuppression.” Using the patient’s own cells eliminates that problem.
Microgravity conditions make it easier for the cells to form three-dimensional structures, which could more easily lead to the growing of whole organs. In fact, Loring's own cells have been sent to the ISS for study.
Loring has a special interest in neurons, or brain cells that can be developed by manipulating cells found in the skin. She is looking to eventually treat Parkinson’s disease using them. The manipulated cells produce dopamine, the critical hormone or neurotransmitter lacking in the brains of patients. A company she founded plans to start a Phase I clinical trial using cell therapies for Parkinson’s soon, she says.
This is the culmination of many years of basic research on her part, some of it on her own cells. In 2007, Loring had her own cells reprogrammed, so there’s a cell line that carries her DNA. “They’re just like embryonic stem cells, but personal,” she said.
Loring has another special interest—sending immature cells into space to be studied at the International Space Station. There, microgravity conditions make it easier for the cells to form three-dimensional structures, which could more easily lead to the growing of whole organs. In fact, her own cells have been sent to the ISS for study. “My colleagues and I have completed four missions at the space station,” she says. “The last cells came down last August. They were my own cells reprogrammed into pluripotent cells in 2009. No one else can say that,” she adds.
Future controversies and tipping points
Although the original SCNT debate has calmed down, more controversies may arise, Loring thinks.
One of them could concern growing synthetic embryos. The embryos are ultimately derived from embryonic stem cells, and it’s not clear to what stage these embryos can or will be grown in an artificial uterus—another recent invention. The science, so far done only in animals, is still new and has not been widely publicized but, eventually, “People will notice the production of synthetic embryos and growing them in an artificial uterus,” Loring says. It’s likely to incite many of the same reactions as the use of embryonic stem cells.
Bernard Siegel, the founder and director of the Regenerative Medicine Foundation and executive director of the newly formed Healthspan Action Coalition (HSAC), believes that stem cell science is rapidly approaching tipping point and changing all of medical science. (For disclosure, I do consulting work for HSAC). Siegel says that regenerative medicine has become a new pillar of medicine that has recently been fast-tracked by new technology.
Artificial intelligence is speeding up discoveries and the convergence of key disciplines, as demonstrated in Atala’s lab, which is creating complex new medical products that replace the body’s natural parts. Just as importantly, those parts are genetically matched and pose no risk of rejection.
These new technologies must be regulated, which can be a challenge, Siegel notes. “Cell therapies represent a challenge to the existing regulatory structure, including payment, reimbursement and infrastructure issues that 20 years ago, didn’t exist.” Now the FDA and other agencies are faced with this revolution, and they’re just beginning to adapt.
Siegel cited the 2021 FDA Modernization Act as a major step. The Act allows drug developers to use alternatives to animal testing in investigating the safety and efficacy of new compounds, loosening the agency’s requirement for extensive animal testing before a new drug can move into clinical trials. The Act is a recognition of the profound effect that cultured human cells are having on research. Being able to test drugs using actual human cells promises to be far safer and more accurate in predicting how they will act in the human body, and could accelerate drug development.
Siegel, a longtime veteran and founding father of several health advocacy organizations, believes this work helped bring cell therapies to people sooner rather than later. His new focus, through the HSAC, is to leverage regenerative medicine into extending not just the lifespan but the worldwide human healthspan, the period of life lived with health and vigor. “When you look at the HSAC as a tree,” asks Siegel, “what are the roots of that tree? Stem cell science and the huge ecosystem it has created.” The study of human aging is another root to the tree that has potential to lengthen healthspans.
The revolutionary science underlying the extension of the healthspan needs to be available to the whole world, Siegel says. “We need to take all these roots and come up with a way to improve the life of all mankind,” he says. “Everyone should be able to take advantage of this promising new world.”
Joy Milne's unusual sense of smell led Dr. Tilo Kunath, a neurobiologist at the Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and a host of other scientists, to develop a new diagnostic test for Parkinson's.
Forty years ago, Joy Milne, a nurse from Perth, Scotland, noticed a musky odor coming from her husband, Les. At first, Milne thought the smell was a result of bad hygiene and badgered her husband to take longer showers. But when the smell persisted, Milne learned to live with it, not wanting to hurt her husband's feelings.
Twelve years after she first noticed the "woodsy" smell, Les was diagnosed at the age of 44 with Parkinson's Disease, a neurodegenerative condition characterized by lack of dopamine production and loss of movement. Parkinson's Disease currently affects more than 10 million people worldwide.
Milne spent the next several years believing the strange smell was exclusive to her husband. But to her surprise, at a local support group meeting in 2012, she caught the familiar scent once again, hanging over the group like a cloud. Stunned, Milne started to wonder if the smell was the result of Parkinson's Disease itself.
Milne's discovery led her to Dr. Tilo Kunath, a neurobiologist at the Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Together, Milne, Kunath, and a host of other scientists would use Milne's unusual sense of smell to develop a new diagnostic test, now in development and poised to revolutionize the treatment of Parkinson's Disease.
"Joy was in the audience during a talk I was giving on my work, which has to do with Parkinson's and stem cell biology," Kunath says. "During the patient engagement portion of the talk, she asked me if Parkinson's had a smell to it." Confused, Kunath said he had never heard of this – but for months after his talk he continued to turn the question over in his mind.
Kunath knew from his research that the skin's microbiome changes during different disease processes, releasing metabolites that can give off odors. In the medical literature, diseases like melanoma and Type 2 diabetes have been known to carry a specific scent – but no such connection had been made with Parkinson's. If people could smell Parkinson's, he thought, then it stood to reason that those metabolites could be isolated, identified, and used to potentially diagnose Parkinson's by their presence alone.
First, Kunath and his colleagues decided to test Milne's sense of smell. "I got in touch with Joy again and we designed a protocol to test her sense of smell without her having to be around patients," says Kunath, which could have affected the validity of the test. In his spare time, Kunath collected t-shirt samples from people diagnosed with Parkinson's and from others without the diagnosis and gave them to Milne to smell. In 100 percent of the samples, Milne was able to detect whether a person had Parkinson's based on smell alone. Amazingly, Milne was even able to detect the "Parkinson's scent" in a shirt from the control group – someone who did not have a Parkinson's diagnosis, but would go on to be diagnosed nine months later.
From the initial study, the team discovered that Parkinson's did have a smell, that Milne – inexplicably – could detect it, and that she could detect it long before diagnosis like she had with her husband, Les. But the experiments revealed other things that the team hadn't been expecting.
"One surprising thing we learned from that experiment was that the odor was always located in the back of the shirt – never in the armpit, where we expected the smell to be," Kunath says. "I had a chance meeting with a dermatologist and he said the smell was due to the patient's sebum, which are greasy secretions that are really dense on your upper back. We have sweat glands, instead of sebum, in our armpits." Patients with Parkinson's are also known to have increased sebum production.
With the knowledge that a patient's sebum was the source of the unusual smell, researchers could go on to investigate exactly what metabolites were in the sebum and in what amounts. Kunath, along with his associate, Dr. Perdita Barran, collected and analyzed sebum samples from 64 participants across the United Kingdom. Once the samples were collected, Barran and others analyzed it using a method called gas chromatography mass spectrometry, or GS-MC, which separated, weighed and helped identify the individual compounds present in each sebum sample.
Barran's team can now correctly identify Parkinson's in nine out of 10 patients – a much quicker and more accurate way to diagnose than what clinicians do now.
"The compounds we've identified in the sebum are not unique to people with Parkinson's, but they are differently expressed," says Barran, a professor of mass spectrometry at the University of Manchester. "So this test we're developing now is not a black-and-white, do-you-have-something kind of test, but rather how much of these compounds do you have compared to other people and other compounds." The team identified over a dozen compounds that were present in the sebum of Parkinson's patients in much larger amounts than the control group.
Using only the GC-MS and a sebum swab test, Barran's team can now correctly identify Parkinson's in nine out of 10 patients – a much quicker and more accurate way to diagnose than what clinicians do now.
"At the moment, a clinical diagnosis is based on the patient's physical symptoms," Barran says, and determining whether a patient has Parkinson's is often a long and drawn-out process of elimination. "Doctors might say that a group of symptoms looks like Parkinson's, but there are other reasons people might have those symptoms, and it might take another year before they're certain," Barran says. "Some of those symptoms are just signs of aging, and other symptoms like tremor are present in recovering alcoholics or people with other kinds of dementia." People under the age of 40 with Parkinson's symptoms, who present with stiff arms, are often misdiagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome, she adds.
Additionally, by the time physical symptoms are present, Parkinson's patients have already lost a substantial amount of dopamine receptors – about sixty percent -- in the brain's basal ganglia. Getting a diagnosis before physical symptoms appear would mean earlier interventions that could prevent dopamine loss and preserve regular movement, Barran says.
"Early diagnosis is good if it means there's a chance of early intervention," says Barran. "It stops the process of dopamine loss, which means that motor symptoms potentially will not happen, or the onset of symptoms will be substantially delayed." Barran's team is in the processing of streamlining the sebum test so that definitive results will be ready in just two minutes.
"What we're doing right now will be a very inexpensive test, a rapid-screen test, and that will encourage people to self-sample and test at home," says Barran. In addition to diagnosing Parkinson's, she says, this test could also be potentially useful to determine if medications were at a therapeutic dose in people who have the disease, since the odor is strongest in people whose symptoms are least controlled by medication.
"When symptoms are under control, the odor is lower," Barran says. "Potentially this would allow patients and clinicians to see whether their symptoms are being managed properly with medication, or perhaps if they're being overmedicated." Hypothetically, patients could also use the test to determine if interventions like diet and exercise are effective at keeping Parkinson's controlled.
"We hope within the next two to five years we will have a test available."
Barran is now running another clinical trial – one that determines whether they can diagnose at an earlier stage and whether they can identify a difference in sebum samples between different forms of Parkinson's or diseases that have Parkinson's-like symptoms, such as Lewy Body Dementia.
"Within the next one to two years, we hope to be running a trial in the Manchester area for those people who do not have motor symptoms but are at risk for developing dementia due to symptoms like loss of smell and sleep difficulty," Barran had said in 2019. "If we can establish that, we can roll out a test that determines if you have Parkinson's or not with those first pre-motor symptoms, and then at what stage. We hope within the next two to five years we will have a test available."
In a 2022 study, published in the American Chemical Society, researchers used mass spectrometry to analyze sebum from skin swabs for the presence of the specific molecules. They found that some specific molecules are present only in people who have Parkinson’s. Now they hope that the same method can be used in regular diagnostic labs. The test, many years in the making, is inching its way to the clinic.
"We would likely first give this test to people who are at risk due to a genetic predisposition, or who are at risk based on prodomal symptoms, like people who suffer from a REM sleep disorder who have a 50 to 70 percent chance of developing Parkinson's within a ten year period," Barran says. "Those would be people who would benefit from early therapeutic intervention. For the normal population, it isn't beneficial at the moment to know until we have therapeutic interventions that can be useful."
Milne's husband, Les, passed away from complications of Parkinson's Disease in 2015. But thanks to him and the dedication of his wife, Joy, science may have found a way to someday prolong the lives of others with this devastating disease. Sometimes she can smell people who have Parkinson’s while in the supermarket or walking down the street but has been told by medical ethicists she cannot tell them, Milne said in an interview with the Guardian. But once the test becomes available in the clinics, it will do the job for her.
[Ed. Note: A older version of this hit article originally ran on September 3, 2019.]