Dopadoc,

What I know of Mr Coleman is simply what I have laid before people here, and I have not gone beyond the nature or extent of the evidence of his claims in what I have drawn attention to in terms of facts. It is a ‘fact’ that he does not claim to cure people and it is equally a ‘fact’ that several posters here say, without foundation, that he does make such a claim. So, let’s keep our facts straight.

I think the location of solid biomarkers for PD at the current time is a double-edged sword, given the context of very spurious theorizing on the cause of this syndrome and the highly problematic iatrogenic drug and surgical treatment on offer for it.

One of the first likely outcomes of the location of biomarkers for PD will be the offloading of patient care from neurologists to Primary Care Physicians and General Practitioners. With a definitive diagnosis to hand, and the long waiting lists in some parts of the world for a referral to specialists, two years in my own case, PCPs would no longer hesitate in wading into the murky waters of prescribing what should remain highly specialized drug therapy. There will be no more “let’s wait and see if this problem goes away by itself” approach, which even if you evidence the relevant biomarkers, might be a good first option, given that there is ‘no cure’. 70% of your Substantia Nigra cells don’t ‘switch off’ over night in the case of idiopathic PD, that accounts for most diagnoses. It is a process and a slow one at that. And as I have spoken of earlier in this thread, a neurologist has admitted in private to me that they see patients who exhibit the early stages of PD but then, provided the medics don’t pronounce on these cases and hold off on drug therapy, symptoms simply recede, the person never knows they had PD, and all is well with the world. It is astonishing that this is not the hottest topic of all in the medical literature on this subject.

Locating biomarkers would be an unequivocal positive development, if we were all at the point of recognizing that you can get ‘a little bit of PD’ and recover, given the right support, and crucially, if you are not put on drugs that mitigate against this process.

Even first stage drugs in this situation can do much harm. On diagnosis, I was immediately put on Selegiline in quite a cavalier fashion, as if it is just a little inconsequential MAOB. I lost my appetite completely, a situation that continued for years, becoming dangerously thin and suffering such cold intolerance and pain that I could barely leave the house. I was incapacitated.

My dopaminergic neurons were suddenly deprived of the nutrition that ought to have been boosted in an appropriate treatment regime. And cells that should have been doing the job of producing dopamine were likely engaged instead in the production of superoxide anion, which is a good way to hasten cell death.

On Mirapexin I suffered a psychosis. On l-dopa I was going around with my name, address and phone number written on a piece of paper in my pocket, such was the state of my cognition. If I hadn’t managed to get off all PD drugs 1.5 years ago, and no thanks to the medical profession, they’d probably be writing down ‘Dementia consequent to PD’ by now, totally ignorant of the fact that my problems were medication related.

There is no shortage of people on this site who have placed their faith in biomedicine to the exclusion of all else. There is room for some additional perspective and critique, given what is at stake for newly diagnosed people wondering if they are trading the present for the future, by going down the conventional path of treatment.

Muireann