Increased awareness and larger donations are drops in the bucket compared with the amount of federal dollars needed
When President Bush signed a congressional resolution officially proclaiming the 1990s as the Decade of the Brain, a cry of triumph rose from patient advocacy groups across the country. Many of the roughly 70 voluntary organizations that represent victims of neurological and mental disorders--a number of whom raise money for research in basic neuroscience as well as for the study of individual diseases and treatments--had devoted countless hours to lobbying Congress to pass the resolution, which Bush signed on July 25, 1989.

"We were thrilled," says Sue Levi-Pearl, research director of the Tourette Syndrome Association, whose 28,000 members donated $350,000 for last year's neurology research budget. "We thought there was going to be some sort of greater attention to neurological disorders [by Congress], and we looked to a major breakthrough in an...

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