David Higgins: Photo courtesy Nancy Ramos @ Silver Eye Photography

As we start a new year, we are fine tuning our soon-to-be-published 2018 Annual Report, summarizing our work over the past 12 months. The report is far more than just a collection of statistics about how many clinical trials we are funding (50 – not too shabby eh!) or that our support has generated an additional $3.2 billion in leveraged funding. It’s also a look at the people who have made this year so memorable – from patients and researchers to patient advocates. We start with our Board member David Higgins, Ph.D.  David is the patient advocate on our Board for Parkinson’s disease. He has a family history of Parkinson’s and has also been diagnosed with the disease himself.

How he sees his role

As a patient advocate my role is not to support any Parkinson’s program that comes in the door and get it funded. We have to judge the science at the same level for every disease and if you bring me a good Parkinson’s project, I will fight tooth and nail to support it. But if you bring me a bad one, I will not support it. I see my role as more of a consultant for the staff and Board, to help advise but not to impose my views on them.

I think what CIRM has done is to create a new way of funding the best science in the world. The involvement of the community in making these decisions is critical in making sure there is an abundance of oversight, that there is not a political decision made about funding. It’s all about the science. This is the most science-based organization that you could imagine.

The Board plays a big role in all this. We don’t do research or come up with the ideas, but we nurture the research and support the scientists, giving them the elements they need to succeed.

And, of course the taxpayers play a huge role in this, creating us in the first place and approving all the money to help support and even drive this research. Because of that we should be as conservative as possible in using this money. Being trustees of this funding is a privilege and we have to be mindful of how to best use it.

On the science

I love, love, love having access to the latest, most interesting, cutting edge research in the world, talking to scientists about what they are doing, how we can support them and help them to do it better, how it will change the world. You don’t have access to anything else like this anywhere else.

It’s like ice cream, you just enjoy every morsel of it and there’s no way you can find that level of satisfaction anywhere else. I really feel, as do other Board members, that we are helping people, that we are changing people’s lives.

I also love the learning curve. The amount I have learned about the field that I didn’t know before is amazing. Every meeting is a chance to learn something new and meeting the scientists who have spent years working on a project is so fascinating and rewarding.

 Unexpected pleasure

The other joy, and I hadn’t anticipated this, is the personal interaction I have with other Board members and staff members. They have become friends, people I really like and admire because of what they do and how committed they are.

When I talk about CIRM I tell people if you live in California you should be proud of how your money is being spent and how it’s making a difference in people’s lives. When I give a talk or presentation, I always end with a slide of the California flag and tell people you should be proud to be here.