Rick writes:

"My point is that we can be rats of distinction simply by keeping good records."

Yes. Yes. Yes.

There's the private side of white-ratting. You take something that you have good reason to believe to be safe: it makes you feel better, so you continue to take it; it makes you feel worse, so you stop. That seems a reasonable approach to me.

But, we can get so much more benefit from the process if we communicate and share our results. This is the public side of white-ratting, it requires:
- measurement;
- statistical analysis;
- controls;
- placeboes;
- blindedness, etc

Provided we, PwP, have the will, we can do all of these.

At the very least, can I urge people (white-rats, other PwP, non-PwP) to provide some data to my online PD measurement and analysis web site PDMeasure:

http://www.parkinsonsmeasurement.org/PDMeasure

This measures your side to side tap test score and stores the results anonymously in a database. The anonymous data is open to anyone to download and analyse.

Just imagine how much more impact it would have if we could quantify the effect of our white-ratting.

John