Chris Mooney, contributor
Thanks to his participation in the 2010 rock stars of science photo shoot that just appeared in the December 2010 “Men of the Year” issue of GQ, geneticist Emil Kakkis now has a pretty freakin’ cool guitar.
In a spread that pairs up 19 biomedical scientists – including Nobel laureates Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California at San Francisco and Phillip A. Sharp of MIT – with eight rock stars, Kakkis appears peering over the shoulder of the rapper Jay Sean. Fitting enough: when he isn’t advocating for developing drugs to treat diseases that affect populations too small to make them profitable, Kakkis is playing the piano. Though he does consider himself more a “tickler of the ivory” than a real musician.
But Kakkis couldn’t exactly bring a piano to the rock stars photo shoot in Culver City where, as he puts it, an effort ensued to “transform this dull sports coat and khaki pants wearing scientist into something cool”. So instead, he brought along a Fender Stratocaster from the early rock era – and got both scientists and rock stars like Brett Michaels of Poison and the Wilson sisters from Heart to sign it.
“Who gets Nobel Prize winning scientists and rock stars on one guitar?” Kakkis says.
Actually, the rock stars campaign, now in its second year, has
unearthed quite a number of top scientists who are also musicians.
Perhaps the kind of creativity required isn’t so different after all.
Last time around, after the campaign appeared in GQ, the current
National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins and Harvard
Alzheimer’s researcher Rudy Tanzi performed live with Aerosmith’s Joe
Perry on Capitol Hill. This time, the photo shoot includes Michael
Weiner of the University California San Francisco, who is not only
principal investigator for the government’s largest funded research
project into Alzheimer’s disease (the $60 million Alzheimer’s Disease
Neuroimaging Initiative), but also an accomplished jazz pianist who has
cut a few CDs.
In his own photo, Weiner was paired with two other Alzheimer’s
researchers and Brett Michaels, formerly of Poison and now a reality TV
star. “He’s recently had some medical issues related to the brain which
make him very sympathetic to the cause,” says Weiner. “He’s just an
amazing guy, huge amounts of charisma.”
Michaels suffered several frightening medical problems due to a
life-threatening brain hemorrhage earlier this year, followed by a minor
stroke. But he’s expected to make a full recovery. That makes him a
testament to the power of medical science to save and improve our
lives – and an icon in support of research.
The rock stars campaign seeks to uncover these unexpected connections
between scientists and stars – and of course, to cast extra light on the
former by pairing them up with the latter. But why does it matter?
Weiner has an answer for his own field, where research funding levels
are dwarfed by the magnitude of the problem, which is exploding as the
population ages. Alzheimer’s, he says, “is going to cost our economy
billions because when older people get dementia, they cost so much more
in care. And of course it produces huge suffering for families. So we
need much more research funding.”
As for Kakkis, the glamour and fashion aside, he wants the public to
better understand that there are “a whole lot of things
unknown – thousands of diseases without treatments out there”. It’s an
argument he makes daily at the Kakkis Ever Life Foundation, where he
serves as president. And for Kakkis, this predicament means that we need
a new generation of researchers who are willing to explore and “break
the rules.”
“It’s not about memorizing facts, it’s actually about figuring out
the unknown,” he says. “It’s like being a musician. We need bold and
creative people to take on these diseases that are not treated.”
If the rock stars of science campaign inspires them to think
differently about science – and get into the field – it will have more than
done its job.