"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 understanding of brain function and human behavior as a result of the Decade of the Brain."
Now, 10 months into that decade, all she feels is disappointment.
"I've seen lots of talk and no dollars," she says. "If Congress really meant this to be the Decade of the Brain, they would have doubled or tripled the money to neurology."
Many officials of the patient advocacy groups--associations commonly known as voluntaries, which work to eradicate diseases from the relatively unknown Charcot-Marie Tooch disease to the more familiar Parkinson's disease--feel similarly disillusioned. On the one hand, they are excited about the resolution ...
