Some of this has been said before on the old BT.

Some questions and a rant (some of this has been posted before)

It seems apparent that the medical research profession has produced little in the way of real protection against the onset or progression of Parkinson’s Disease.

"The guidelines, released in Neurology and at the AAN meeting, were quite explicit about agents of neuroprotection -- drugs that can prevent or turn back Parkinson’s Disease: There are none, the guidelines said."

OK, so they can’t defeat it or slow it down. In spite of that, it’s apparent from reading this board that a number of you have "pet" theories on protecting your selves against further progress of the disease. What are they? Do they work? Does your Neurologist know about them? Does she/he approve? How do you measure your theories’ success? Do you proceed from observations/anecdotes to hypothesis to hypothesis testing to theory? Have these data been published?

I also have "pet" theories. They are very modest and certainly unpublishable. I believe in exercise, a positive outlook, humor (I would rather be treated to a good laugh then to some ideas on curing Parkinson’s Disease), a healthy diet and, contrary to a number of posters, I also believe in the medical profession. It has come very far in the post World War II years. I remember, eons ago, when I was a little boy, doctors used to make home visits. Before his arrival (it was always a male back then), we laid out the things he would need; a clean towel (to dry his hands) and a clean teaspoon (to depress the patient’s tongue). Anything else he might need was in his black bag, which seemed very small. Think of the tools that the medical profession has today.

It seems to me that some efforts of the PD community have been misdirected. Take a lesson from the HIV community. It has been more successful than we in attracting research dollars in spite of the fact that our community is larger (in the U.S. 1.3 million versus 950,000 for AIDS). They have done so by advocacy, sometimes stridently so. Further, rather than making an enemy of the research community, they have become collaborators. Isn’t it time to stop referring to members of the medical profession as idiots and begin to see them and us as collaborators?

Lloyd