We were not part of braintalk so missed out on prior posts there about viruses and PD. But we are intrigued by it, mainly because a possible connection between PD and a viral cause seems to resemble AIDS so closely...my understanding of AIDS is (generally, I have only extremely limited knowledge of this and don't mean to sound off about something I really dont' know much about)...you get infected without knowing it (or caring, in some cases), and the virus lays in wait, for years, sometimes even a decade or more. Why? What is going on during that time? What is that viral bug doing all that time between infection and manifestation of clinical symptoms? Is damage taking place, but undetected because there are no physical symptoms? It is fascinating.

And this is precisely our question: how would one even go about trying to find out if there were any foreign "intruders" in his or her body? They can test for a specific known virus, but what about an unknown virus, maybe one that has mutated into a different and wholly unrecognizable form? How would you find that out, what specialist do you see and what test do you ask for? Somehow I doubt we could just waltz into an immunologist's office and say "Run whatever test there is to see what critters might be inside me". Or not? That's what I was trying to find out.