Joe Biden and David Axelrod get behind CURE for epilepsy

“Science is back,” declared Vice President Joe Biden, eliciting enthusiastic applause at last night’s CURE (Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy) benefit dinner at Navy Pier’s Grand Ballroom. “Not only where I work, but everywhere.”

The CURE organization, founded and chaired by Susan Axelrod, wife of former White House senior adviser David Axelrod, is dedicated to finding a cure for the brain disorder, which affects about 50 million people worldwide. Last night’s event raised more than $800,000 for research.

During his talk, Biden empathetically recalled his own struggles with seizures, which he suffered after a life-threatening aneurysm in 1988, and recounted the mind-numbing effects of taking the “same anti-seizure drugs as your children.”

Biden, describing seizures as  “a lightning storm of the brain,” went on to cite scientific strides being made in understanding the brain, from developments in computer science to the human genome. "For the first time in human history, significant resources are being applied to unlock how to catch that lightning." Understanding how the brain, or man’s “final frontier,” works would also unlock the cure to other diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, he said.  

The Axelrods, whose eldest daughter suffers from epilepsy, gave emotional talks before Biden, recalling their first experience with the disease and the helpless feeling that came with “hearing our baby cry out in terror in the night before slipping into a seizure.” Rahm Emanuel, Gov. Pat Quinn and former state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias were also in attendance.