The Chevy Chase Face

An old facet of the disease process active in patients with multiple sclerosis has been given a new face, thanks to the recent groundbreaking efforts of sub molecular researchers (MRs).

They call it the Chevy Chase Face, and it is bound to propel MS research to new heights of less value than ever before.

Patients who suffer from MS have long been painfully aware of the proclivity of the disease toward activating a sort of total body dyscoordination—a blatantly ridiculous inability to function as a normal person. This clumsiness can be manifested at any time and in any way, without warning or remedy. It may be manifested in suddenly falling down a stairway, tripping over a curb, or indeed tripping over nothing. It is apparent in the difficulty experienced with challenges such as holding two objects at once, talking while driving, chewing gum and walking at the same time.

But the most classic example of this curious deficit in coordination, affecting more than 500,000 people nationwide, is found in the consistently high rate of failure (70-90 percent) when patients were asked to look at their wristwatches while simultaneously holding a cup of coffee (or, indeed, any sort of liquid in a cup or a glass—for it was found in research that the type, flavor, and temperature properties of the cup’s contents had no statistically relevant effect on the outcome of experimentation).

Given these results, it seemed “the most natural thing,” in the words of one chuckling biologist, to immediately envision the slapstick comedy of Chevy Chase, particularly in his years on Saturday Night Live.

But there is more—and this is where the research becomes truly thrilling. In examining the brain activity of study subjects through microscopic subatomic microscopes planted in the frontal lobe of the brain of each study subject, a clear visual process was discovered to be taking place in the interaction of molecules and electrons at the very moment when each subject went to look at his watch while holding his cup, and thus causing the non-particular liquid to spill on his shirt front.

“It was like seeing a poodle crash into an elephant, and then get their leashes all tangled together,” one researcher quipped rather stupidly.

Moreover, when biologists zoomed in and focused on the exact area of molecular interaction, they found to their utter amazement that the offending molecule, when so isolated, actually looked like Chevy Chase!

“It was the most ridiculous thing I had ever seen,” said the leading biologist in the study. “It was completely unexpected. And boy was it funny!”

He went on to say, more soberly, that though these results had been exciting, much more research would be needed in the future.

“We know what,” he said. “Now the question is why?”

Chevy Chase himself could not be reached for comment.