This thread has made good reading. Especially where people point out what is not known about the condition "commonly known as PD". My only addition to the various opinions on this subject is that I fail to see how there can be progress without patients being viewed as 'whole people', that is not just as neuro-defective in some way.

To illustrate how observation can go missed even between doctors and their peers, I cite my own personal experience of being treated with an anti-cholinergic medication by a urologist. This well-repected specialist was not surprised when I said that the said medication had a positive effect on my pd symptoms, especially mobility; he had observed this in other patients over years. This information did not go down well with my neurologist, who brushed it aside. Yet over the years I have discontinued and re-started this medication several times, mainly because of visual and oral side-effects, and each time on returning have been able to make the same observation.

If such things are so hard to share between disciplines, it seems an uphill battle for the citizen scientist, patient or impatient! Yet we have a condition that affected us in a multi-systemic way. I would ask where are the MDS who really understand this and communicate with other specialisms. A question I believe I was asking at least 5 years ago. At least if patients were able to say I use 'x' because it helps, it would provide some kind of statistic that showed what was helping, rather than stabbing in the dark to impose a set of drugs that may or may not be of use at all. We have the means to collect that kind of data, raw though it might be. Orthodox or not, it is still relevant.