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"My message to all constituent groups is very much the same and fairly simple: please do your best to understand the patient. We don't have the same symptoms; we progress at different rates. Do we have the same disease? The overall failures of recent clinical trials, despite good results among some trial participants (including the placebo effect) suggests the pool is diluted. Even though we have learned a lot about PD over the past 10 years, we face many more to a cure. But we can't cure or even find more effective treatments for PD unless we understand it. And I don't think we can understand it unless researchers listen to patients to learn how PD lives in our bodies."
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I would add that researchers and physicians (and patients too for that matter) must get away from the view of PD as a one-dimensional neurological problem. Neurological problems don't show up until 80% of the damage is done. There are decades of subterranean erosion before the first tremor during which the immune system and endocrine system and GI system are the arenas. Eventually, so many critical components get worn that we lose our "bounce" - our ability to respond efficiently to our environment.