UC Davis Neurologist With ALS Writes Via Eye-Tracking Tablet
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- Christopher Campos, a neurologist and assistant professor at UC Davis Health, was formally diagnosed with ALS in 2025 after symptoms first appeared as weakness in his right hand in fall 2023.
- Campos's disease has progressed to full paralysis of all four limbs — he can no longer stand, walk, swallow, or speak, and now receives all nutrition through a tube in his stomach.
- He communicates exclusively through a specialized tablet whose cameras track eye movements on an on-screen keyboard, which is how the entire opinion piece was composed.
- The diagnostic process took roughly two years from initial symptoms, a delay Campos says is unfortunately the norm because of physician unfamiliarity with signs, discomfort with the diagnosis's finality, and the shuffling between specialists even for well-insured patients.
- Now unable to practice, Campos has pivoted to advocacy, observing that strangers frequently direct questions about him to his family members rather than to him and arguing that protecting patient autonomy must be taught in medical training and reinforced through policy.
- He calls for sustained ALS research funding, noting that researchers are closer than ever to understanding the disease, with new therapies entering clinical trials and precision medicine now targeting genetic causes once considered theoretical.
- Campos was the first in his family to pursue higher education, grew up in South Florida, and had been seeing patients and conducting research at UC Davis before his diagnosis forced him to stop.
Why it matters: A neurologist who once sat across the exam table delivering ALS diagnoses now lives with the disease and wrote his essay through an eye-tracking tablet — giving his calls for sustained research funding and systems-level protection of patient autonomy unusual clinical credibility. His firsthand account of a roughly two-year diagnostic delay and the way physical dependence erodes personhood in everyday interactions makes a policy case from inside the disease.
