At the evening ceremony, Reeve was given the Service Award for his unwavering personal campaign to increase public and legislative awareness of the need to support basic research in health. Injured in an equestrian competition in 1995, Reeve is a powerful spokesperson for people with disabilities and for the profound impact medical science can have on everyone s life. So much progress has been made that we are financing problem solving. Diseases are problems, and problems can be solved. It was a simple decision to make.
Life is fragile and unpredictable.
The UCSD-Salk Institute Translational Medicine Award, for pioneering scientific and clinical work that leads to therapeutic advances, was given to Dr. Dennis Slamon and to Genentech, Inc., represented by Arthur Levinson, chairman and chief executive officer. I am humbled by this award, said Levinson. Every step of the way was dependent upon basic science support. What drove our lab and labs around the world was the idea that we had not taken advantage of biology but were dependent upon cytotoxic drugs in the treatment of cancer, which is like throwing a bomb in, hoping to kill more bad cells than good. To understand the changes at the biological level gives us hope that we can understand the problem and then solve it, said Slamon.