Paula and Carolyn,

The patients who participated in the GDNF trials, as I understand it, were told they were testing GDNF as a potential treatment for Parkinson's disease patients. The pharmaceutical company later claimed they were testing not GDNF but the delivery system. When the test was showing that GDNF was showing positive results, the patients' considered the test to be successful and felt since they took the risk they earned the right to be the first beneficiaries of the drug.

The pharmceutical industry chose not to tell the patients the entire truth of what the research was for. After GDNF was prooven to be successful, the Pharmaceutical industry pulled the plug of funding and now claimed they were doing research on the delivery system to see if it would be adequate to deliver the GDNF in the right amount to prevent it from causing tumors or to quick growth of dopamine neurons.

The pharmaceutical industry has lost its trustworthyness. They lied to the patients convincing they were doing something for the benefit of humanity and left out the danger the participants would be in. Perhaps the pharmaceutical industry decided that since the patients were close to dying anyway, they may as well make themselves available for dangerous research.

No, the pharmaceutical industry has blatently proven themselves as untrustworthy. Does the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one? Does the pharmaceutical companies "right to know" come before the value of a human life? An individual choice indeed. What of the family members who love that human life and will not agree with the assessment that the individual should sacrifice their life over the family who values the patient's life to the very end. Does the patient blindly trust the pharmaceutical Industry and risk removing themselves from family that loves them for who they are and not the term of their life?

What a difficult discussion.

Vicky