A Loud Suit of Armor
by Misha Angrist
“There’s just a lot of despair in the world right now,” Rick Bedlack says. “There’s a lot of anger and negativity.”
He is 6’3” in cowboy boots, sporting large glasses, a full head of gray hair with a hint of the old David Lynch pompadour, and an uncharacteristically understated silver blazer. We are sitting in his office in the nondescript clinic at Duke University where he works (“kind of a dump,” he says; he dreams of a new one). Behind him is an X-Files poster of a flying saucer that says I WANT TO BELIEVE.
Bedlack understands the despair, but he’s not going to give in to it. There is no time for that. He is a highly decorated neuroscientist, Duke University’s Stewart, Hughes and Wendt Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Neuromuscular Disease; a clinical trialist and patient advocate; a teacher; a spouse; and, not least, a very sharply-dressed man. But if he were to design his own business card, it might include just two words: Hope Booster.
Keep us breathing fire!
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