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Four
months in Israel changed the way Howard Gendelman thought about
the brain's immune system. As he explains it, he had been studying
how nerve cells damaged by AIDS or Alzheimer's can lead to dementia
or paralysis when he arrived at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot-where,
as it turned out, the Israelis were testing a startling hypothesis.
"Could the brain's own immune system be used to reverse
or prevent neural damage?" they asked, leading Gendelman
to wonder if it might be possible to develop vaccines for use
in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
"It was a spark that led me to broaden my perspective on
immune responses in the brain, and to, in part, change direction,"
says Gendelman, who heads the Center for Neurovirology and Neurodegenerative
Diseases at the University of Nebraska Medical College. He is
even "working towards" a vaccine for Parkinson's disease,
he says.
Gendelman spent the last four months of 2000 in Israel, accompanied
at times by his wife Bonnie, two of his three children, and his
73-year-old mother, "rediscovering what it is to be a Jew
and what it means to live in a different cultural environment."
It turned out to be a powerful bonding opportunity, especially
for Gendelman and 14-year-old Adam, who he says "grew together"
in experiences that ranged from shopping in Rehovot's streets
to scuba-diving in Eilat.
He also had some funny moments. Once, while walking through the
Arab quarter of Jerusalem in a University of Nebraska T-shirt,
an Arab fell into step behind him and began taunting him. Gendelman
turned around nervously, because it was the Intifada- only to
learn that his nemesis had spent two years at the University of
Oklahoma and remained loyal to its football team, the Corn Huskers'
arch-rival.
Gendelman had to leave abruptly, four months ahead of schedule,
to face a political storm at his home institution. Abortion foes
in Omaha had been comparing him and his colleagues, who had been
using tissues from aborted fetuses in their research, to Nazi
doctors in what one described as a "battle between good and
evil;" they even picketed his home. Gendelman's impassioned
defense of his work, with the potential to aid Alzheimer's and
Parkinson's victims, helped to defeat an attempt to ban such research
in Nebraska, and to quell the national uproar that followed over
stem cell research.
But he envisions future collaborations with his counterparts
in Israel, and hopes to apply the unused portion of his Fulbright
grant to another stay, in the next year or two. He has submitted
an article to a leading medical journal on the U.S. work inspired
by his counterparts in Rehovot, and marvels at what they managed
to accomplish despite day-to-day obstacles that included threats
to their own safety.
"We're working on similar things, but they have ideas and
technologies we don't have," he says, "so we are hoping
this relationship will evolve."
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