ELECTRIC BOOK SPONSORS ROUND THE WORLD CYCLE RECORD ATTEMPT TO RAISE £1.8 MILLION FOR PARKINSON'S DISEASE RESEARCH On 29th of March 2009, James Bowthorpe will saddle up and cycle 18,000 miles round the globe, hoping to break the recently set world record and raise £1.8 million to support research into Parkinson's Disease. James will be cycling an average of 120 miles a day and is aiming to break the current record (Mark Beaumont, 2007) by over three weeks. The route starts in London and traverses Europe, passing into Asia at Istanbul, crosses Iran, Pakistan and India where conditions for cycling get a lot harder. Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore follow, then the 4000+ miles of Australia and New Zealand. Canada and the USA make up the rest of the mileage from Vancouver to New York before the final straight from Portugal to London. Parkinson's Disease (PD) was first described almost 200 years ago, but what is driving the disease is still unknown. Current routine treatments only target the symptoms; a change in approach is desperately needed. There are over 120,000 people with PD in the UK, with 10,000 being diagnosed every year. For the last two years, James has been a volunteer with the "What's Driving Parkinson's?" research team, which is funded through the Psychiatry Research Trust (UK Charity No. 284286) at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London. The research is headed by Doctors John and Sylvia Dobbs; they have developed a unique approach to the disease over more than ten years. The next stage of the research will cost £5 million. James' experience of the novel approach taken by the team at Kings, and its benefit to patients, is what has inspired him to take on this massive challenge. “Dynamic and unique research requires and equally singular fundraising proposition. I’m not qualified to explain the intricacies of this research, but I have seen its benefits to patients over the last two years and I’ve become very frustrated that it is not funded properly. The work carried out by Drs John and Sylvia Dobbs and their team is innovative in that it focuses on causation rather than symptomatic treatments. The next stage of the work is broad in scope with collaborators in several different field. The team’s intention is to avoid the usual piecemeal approach of small selfcontained studies, that might lead to inappropriate translation; they hope to initiate epidemiological, laboratory, and clinical trial studies in parallel, making the best use of financial resources and collaborators. The task ahead of these researchers is immense and much harder than what I will go through over the next six months. Perhaps what we need first is a paradigm shift; I want to help accelerate this.” James has cycled long distances before, his first trip taking him to the far north of Canada when he was 18. He has since crossed the Indian Himalayas and biked from Alaska to LA, but the challenge at hand will be several times further and more intense than anything he has done before. James is currently training in and around London, where he lives, and working on the complicated logistics and technology involved. James is 31 and can’t think of anything he’d rather be doing. More details on Globecycle from www.globecycle.org More info on Parkinson's Disease from www.whatsdrivingparkinsons.net