Posted by Elizabeth on July 25, 1999, at 22:47:40
In reply to Re: Present, future; possible cure for bipolar disease, posted by Cynthia on July 23, 1999, at 22:35:54
> Aren't you the mad scientist? Just the kind of person I like to keep in touch with. No one is smarter than a crazy scientist.
Sometimes! The trouble with mad scientists (I don't place Nancy in this category - sorry Nancy, you're just not nuts about) is that they have very creative ideas, but most often it's hard to separate the truly brilliant parts from the parts that are just nuts! There was a guy who was notorious at MIT for this - "the bald guy," this guy (bald of course) who carried around two shopping bags full of loose papers and smelled like he never showered. He would sit in on all the trendy math and physics classes (I came across him in differential geometry and GR) and ask totally off-the-wall questions that seemed pretty irrelevant and possibly just nonsensical, except that they could very well have been brilliant and we just didn't know any better. (Judging from what my professors had to say, though, most of his questions were just plain loopy.)
Rumor was that he had been a physics professor at BU until he had an accident (car?) that resulted in some sort of brain damage.
>Science doesn't interest me, but god, getting better does.
That's a shame, that science doesn't interest you. For me, it's a lifestyle. I don't share Nancy's confidence that there will be a cure for manic-depressive illness in the next few years (and I'm pretty sure that gene therapy won't be the answer, though it might be used to prevent the disorder in children with the relevant genes), but I certainly do think that science and technology are the keys to treating and preventing illness of all kinds, despite the current popularity of new-age therapies of various sorts.
poster:Elizabeth
thread:7962
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990726/msgs/9210.html