Molecular Biologist - Heal Thyself

So, there are a lot of scientists in the world, and a reasonable number of jolly good ones. Of these, a fair proportion will end up with some untreatable progressive disease such as cancer or Alzheimer's. I've known eight or ten world- class scientists, for instance, who have fallen to cancer of one type or another. Most of them (in fact, all of them now I think about it) worked right up to the end.

Now, somebody once said something about imminent death focussing the mind wonderfully. And, as it happens, laws governing experimentation on oneself are quite lax (at least in the UK, and probably elsewhere).

So, here's the plan. Set up, and fund, the Hail Mary Institute for Biomedical Research. Suitably talented scientists, faced with a bleak prognosis, are given lifetime (hah!) tenure. During this time, they are encouraged to work flat out on finding a cure for what ails them. They cannot, of course, use any other human subjects in their work. They will be focussed like nobody else can be; they will be reckless; there's a good chance they will simply accelerate their own demise; they will document their efforts. But they will spend their last months doing what they love and, once in a few hundred times, they may come up with something that works and that nobody else was crazy enough to try.