Leonore, have a great vacationn, hon.

Rick - that's very interesting about Requip...it's true that every body is different.

But the free will versus evil drug thing -my personality totally changed. My behavior was way different than it had ever been. And my doc just saying to me as she prescribed it, "you're gonna be up cleaning closets with this one,"
was hardly adequate warning for the mental confusion and change that resulted in me. Never a drinker before, I became not an alcoholic, but someone that got into reckless recreational drinking and carousing to the point where I found myself being raped in the back room of a hardcore gay bar. Sorry to have to be so harsh about this stuff, but I'm talking serious personality change and inability to act appropriately. I was not like that before or since, so I take issue I guess finaly with the idea of personal demons - if something does stir up personal demons, then that's very serious side effect, and since they knew about it, we should have been told, too. And at that point when you are that confused, it's hard to just make a decision to just stop it and be different. It causes a sense of mania, which can be hard to recognize and address.

I disagree that there are no evil drugs. Drugs that seem to have built into their design addictive properties that ultimately worsen and hasten your condition at the same time that somebody is making tons of money from your being on it forever, when they never warned you that once on it, you couldn't get off of it..........and if not inherently evil in themselves, the way drugs are administered in the US surely is reprehensible. Just how much more expensive they are here - Stalevo cost me 1/8 the price in Colombia, South America. And no, it wasn't a fake.

US citizens, I urge you to consider the role of the pharmaceuticals in our society. Once again, we have by far the most expensive health care system in the world, but the worst record of the industrialized nations in preventable deaths - those that could have been prevented by timely and effective care.

We are like 42nd in world ranking in life expectancy, and 35th or something in infant mortality. Yet our system costs more than twice as much as any other...Why? Where is all that money going? With all our resources, I think these figures are just shocking, and anybody who doesn't read them and not think that there's a very serious situation - basically we're being totally robbed and at the expense of our health... We need major change and the need for it becomes more obvious daily.

That's why hearing about the Mirapex verdict felt like better than dopamine. It felt just a little bit like the people who have been jerking us around (oh, it's the FDA's fault for not making us warn people what we already knew was wrong) - were starting to - just a little bit really so far -to reveal that they've been cynically manipulating the public for years. Now they're finding out that mammograms cause or spread cancer more than they detect it - hello, it doesn't even take a scientist to figure out that something blasting you with radiation 1000x greater than a chest x-ray might be a tad dangerous?

Who are you guys feeling sorry for the drug companies trying to protect? They're laughing all the way to the bank. I know it's so disheartening, especially when we need this medication to survive, and we want to believe that it is actually 'medicine,' as the pharmas speciously refer to their products. But it's making us dependent, not more healthy, and the only real chances we've seen out there for a cure have been halted inexplicably in their tracks, others forbidden to pick up the ball, and the key players have 'moved on.'

I really think we have to unite and say we're not going to take this crap anymore. Forget about appeasing this organization or foundation or medical institution, or drug company, and say we PWP make public DEMAND that Amgen release the licensing rights on GDNF if they're not going to pursue it, DEMAND that if our nation's top doctors are sitting on a patent on something that they have done research on and already know it's a good thing and already widely available - that we BE TOLD that information. We should be demanding FULL DISCLOSURE of all researchers, names of who did what work for what industry. Finding out that one of the world's best neuros wrote papers for the welding industry so that it could be proven that welders didn't need protection, received a quiet $3 million for that work, and then lo and behold, it seems that he was on the Financial Disclosure Overseeing Body at his hospital.... Why are we taking this lying down?? Where is it getting us?? What do we get - thrown a bone like a new Neupro patch every coupla years? C'mon... We are paying TOP DOLLAR and what are we getting that is so hugely advantageous?

To me, that's what taking personal responsibility is - demanding truth, integrity and fairness in the way I am treated.