Michael J Fox turns his battle against Parkinson's into a sitcom
It is one of the more courageous comebacks in the history of American showbusiness. For more than 20 years, Michael J Fox has been battling Parkinson's disease. Last week he brought that fight to national broadcast TV with a new sitcom, The Michael J. Fox Show, in which – perhaps unsurprisingly – he plays a Parkinson's-afflicted TV star (a newscaster) struggling to rebuild his career. While reviews have been mixed, there's no reservation about the Back to the Future actor's determination to continue acting.
Now 52, Fox has had Parkinson's since 1991. Thirteen years ago he left his starring role in Spin City because he felt the symptoms of his disease were starting to interfere with his performance. He turned his attention to raising money for Parkinson's research and raising a family, only taking limited parts in shows like Larry Davis's Curb Your Enthusiasm.
At the time of his diagnosis, doctors said he had no more than a decade left in his acting career. Now they say he's a medical anomaly – rather than becoming less responsive to drugs that can help regulate tremors and tics, he is still highly responsive. He recently told reporters he's grown to live with and adapt to the disease.
"There's nothing horrifying about it to me," he said. "I don't think it's gothic nastiness. There's nothing horrible on the surface about someone with a shaky hand. The way I look at it, sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's funny. I need to look at it that way."
While there's nothing mawkish about Fox's attitude to his condition – "I think it's really audacious to do a show about a guy living with a diagnosis of Parkinson's and not making a big deal of it," he says – there's some question over whether audiences too can adapt.
His disease is an integral part of the plot and key component of the comedy. When he struggles to serve scrambled eggs to his family, his wife impatiently grabs the spoon. "Can you not have a personal victory right now? We are starving!"
Climate change likely to turn UK's weather more extreme
Warmer, wetter winters and more extreme rainfall are what the UK can expect from climate change, meteorological experts warned on Friday.
Although the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not go into detail on individual countries, the regional and global trends identified in the assessment can be extrapolated to reflect some of the likely impacts on Britain.
Dr Peter Stott, of the Met Office, said more extreme rainfall was likely to be the most noticeable impact. "There is an increased risk of extremes. As the atmosphere warms, it can hold more moisture, so there is more to fall when there are conditions that produce rain."
Those extremes would be reflected in temperature rises too, he said: "The warmest days will become hotter than they would have been."
However, scientists cautioned that natural variability will continue to play a big role in determining the UK's weather, so there will continue to be exceptional cold snaps and cool summers. New research not yet included in the IPCC also suggests there may be a link between the melting of the Arctic and duller, wetter summers in the UK, said Stott, but this is still in its early stages.
And a further factor could complicate the picture in Britain. The IPCC report identified a potential weakening of a major system of ocean currents called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). That weakening could slightly dampen the effects of warming on Europe. But Matt Collins of Exeter University said it was unlikely to cause an absolute cooling: "It could offset some of the warming, but really the greenhouse gas signal wins over the AMOC.
It may be slightly less warm than it otherwise would have been."
