Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về y học được đăng trên tạp chí y học quốc tế cung cấp cho các bạn kiến thức về ngành y đề tài: Twilight of a hero. | Comment Twilight of a hero Gregory A Petsko Address Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center Brandeis University Waltham MA 02454-9110 USA. E-mail petsko@ Published 28 September 2004 Genome Biology 2004 5 116 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at http 2004 5 l0 ll6 2004 BioMed Central Ltd At the height of his fame he could walk past a monastery in Tibet and Buddhist monks would look up from their prayer wheels point their bony fingers and shout out his name. He has always been one of my heroes not for what he did in the boxing ring though that was magical almost more ballet than prizefighting at least in his early years but for what he said and did outside of it. In the late 1960s when like a lot of other young men I was trying to prove to people including myself that being against the Vietnam War didn t necessarily mean that you were a coward he went to jail for refusing to be drafted into what he considered an unjust war No Vietcong he said memorably ever called me a nigger. . With that gesture the problem was solved. No one could ever accuse Mohammed Ali of being a coward. Now he is a shaking slurred-speaking shadow of that quickwitted loud-mouthed powerful graceful young man. Parkinson s Disease has done what no single opponent not even the United States government could do it has taken away the essence of the man and left us with a shadow -externally for the real cruelty of Parkinson s is that its victims are usually fine mentally. They know exactly what is happening to them they simply can no longer control their bodies because the dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra of their midbrain the region that generates smooth movement are dying. Mohammed Ali s Parkinson s Disease was brought on by inflammation caused by years of repeated trauma to the brain from his chosen profession. It will kill him eventually as it does most sufferers unless they die of something else .