Those in the UK may know Tom, a tireless patient advocate and fundraiser who made a radio documentary about the Amgen-GDNF case. He is going to be presented with a prestigious award for this radio show. I hope that means they will put the show back online for everyone to hear.

Tom has worked with us on several occasions and we are very proud of him.....a great guy, a great advocate, a complete optimist, diagnosed in his twenties..... no one said life would be easy.

If any of you over in the UK see anything to post about this, please do.

paula

He's a remarkable guy!

4,500 Miles, Three Mountains and a Marathon for Parkinson's - Tom Isaacs' remarkable challenge

Tom Isaacs, 35 years old, set himself the challenge of walking around the coastline of Great Britain between April 2002-April 2003, raising more than £300,000 on route.This is a distance of some 4,500 miles and represents the equivalent of walking from London to Bombay.

This would be difficult enough for anyone, but Tom has had Parkinson's disease for eight years. Exciting breakthroughs in research are being made, but funds are desperately needed. With your help there is genuine hope of finding a cure.

Tom says: "I'm looking forward to the day when I can say I used to have Parkinson's".

*************

From a transcript of another radio show:

TOM ISAACS

There was actually one night where I'd had a skinful and actually couldn't move at the end of the evening, which was strange, I just thought - put it down to being a little bit drunk. Looking back on it, it was obviously the first signs of Parkinson's. It's funny, you don't really know what symptoms you've got because it's just something you've always lived with. I have something called celiac disease, which I've had since birth, which is obviously a problem with the gut and I suspect that that is related to my Parkinson's, although there's no clinical proof of that. I've always noticed that my Parkinson symptoms are far worse when I've got some sort of gut problem - if I'm constipated or if I've got diarrhoea - then the knock on effect of my symptoms is very marked.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/...20070213.shtml

BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION

RADIO SCIENCE UNIT

CASE NOTES

Programme 3. - Parkinson's Disease

RADIO 4

TUESDAY 13/02/07

A newsletter:

http://www.epda.eu.com/pdfs/epdaPlus/issue_03.pdf

Link from the magazine:

E_Gym
Electronic Gymnasium - Gymnastics for patients with Parkinson's Disease

http://parkinson-italia.info/e_gym_uk/

The audio isn't great, but it's useful. Example:

http://parkinson-italia.info/e_gym_uk/uk01.php

Congratulations to Tom!!

Tom wanted me to be sure that everyone congratulating him knows that he was not personally nominated for an award, rather the radio program entitled "Chasing a cure" that was produced by Barney Roundtree on BBC 4 on November 8, 2006 was one of 5 programs nominated in the category of "feature award" in the 2007 Sony Radio Academy Awards

http://www.radioawards.org/nominations/noms.htm

scroll down to Feature Award under the heading Production Awards to see all the nominees in this category.

Tom should not be so modest about this achievement, because he was the main motivation behind the program and is the primary person in the story. We all should be happy, especially if the program wins the award, because the thrust of the story is the saga of GDNF and Amgen. This is a story, fit for a John Grisham novel, that a number of us in the Parkinson Pipeline Project have been deeply involved in with Tom and others world wide for several years now. If you havent heard the program, you should certainly try to hear it. It was very excellent.

Efforts are continuing to try to work with Amgen with regard to GDNF, which to us is still the closest best treatment in the pipeline for PD. This means we will never stop trying to get this treatment available to patients unless and until something emerges that is better. So 3 cheers for TOM... a job well done.

Perry

Thanks Perry and thanks for the info ZF!

On one of Tom's walks, an acquaintance (don't know if it was a trial participant or someone who was just in the know about how well the participants were doing) called and told Tom he could stop walking they had found the cure.

paula

ok here we go - his program is nominated - hasn't won yet -

The Feature Award -Chasing a Cure

http://www.radioawards.org/nominations/noms.htm

http://www.radioawards.org/news/news.htm

paula