At first read i thought this to be "pseudoscience", but when i read on, i can see that there maybe merit to all this. Last year, i forget what issue, "Science" had a publication that begged the question " why are we all about 20-30% (?, i forget the quote given), "foreign" (actually commensal) organisms?. With all the recent press that microbes and disease are getting, i am almost sure that some researchers are on to something, but personaly haven' t a clue.
Peg's statement congealed it for me a bit. What if a normally symbiotic bacterium has been "forced" to alter things in it's own genome to survive the onslaught of antibiotics, which are everywhere, even tainting our so called "drinking water". Now what if one of these microbes, "built" a heretofore "unneccessary" enzyme which hydroxylates dopamine specifically at the 6 position of the aryl ring? Maybe as a defense against some other pathogenic bacterium, who almost totally repopulates the gut after it's weaker, beneficial, non-harmful brethren have been killed off after a particularly high dose or long time use of one of our tough to metabolize antibiotics? Then we would have 6-hydroxydopamine, one of the most powerful Parkinsons CAUSING, SMALL MOLECULES KNOWN??? Or, what if one of the "newcomers" for some unknown reason produces an MPTP neurotoxin of some kind (small molecule, not "dumped", but reabsorbed), do to bowel changes?? cs