NeuroTalk Support Groups - A Death in Edmonds - drugs cause death -2 conflicting articles on PD

A Death in Edmonds
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=474219

Last New Year's Eve, Danielle McCarthy took ecstasy for the first time with some friends. The Puyallup teenager died on New Year's Day. The State of Washington has charged McCarthy's friends in her death. But what if the drugs didn't kill McCarthy?
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handed over pills of ecstasy to Dona, and Dona handed him cash. Both girls took a pill.

The two cars arrived in Edmonds about an hour later. Ryan Mills, 19 years old, was hosting a New Year's Eve party at his mother's house. Mills's mother was away. Inside, about 18 people in their late teens and early 20s were smoking pot and drinking. Danielle opened a can of beer, but Dona warned her not to drink—alcohol and ecstasy are a bad combination, she said. Danielle chugged it anyway. Kelsey was drinking shots of Vox vodka.

Less than an hour later, still before midnight, about eight of the revelers decided to leave for a party in Seattle's University District. On the way, the cars stopped at a gas station to rendezvous with a friend whose clutch had burned out on the freeway. Danielle told Dona that the ecstasy "wasn't kicking in." Dona and Danielle both took another pill. The New Year arrived as they sat in the parking lot.

When they reached the party on Greek Row, Danielle got out of the car and immediately became ill, vomiting again and again. She urinated on herself. David and Dona cleaned her up and took care of her. Guys in the group returned periodically, one with a bottle of Aquafina, but Danielle couldn't hold down water. Dona assured friends that Danielle was fine, insisting she just had too much to drink.

At 3:30 a.m., the frat-row parties died down. Danielle slumped with her head down on the drive back in the Jeep. Back in Edmonds, Dona and David helped Danielle walk back into Ryan Mills's house. Danielle was still somewhat coherent but she was slipping in and out of consciousness, periodically waking up to vomit. If there was any suspicion that Danielle was having a bad reaction to the ecstasy or that something else was seriously wrong, what happened next should have confirmed it: At around 4:00 a.m. Danielle tensed up.
She began to shake. She looked like she was having a seizure.

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=474219
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Ecstasy users 'risk Parkinson's disease'
19:00 26 September 2002
NewScientist.com news service
David Concar
People using Ecstasy for as little as one night are putting themselves at risk of developing Parkinson's disease, warns a new investigation of the drug's effects on animal brains.

The study uncovers evidence of a type of nerve damage never previously seen in monkeys or rats exposed to Ecstasy, or MDMA, and will stoke an increasingly acrimonious debate about whether it is toxic to human nerve cells.

George Ricaurte and his team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, gave up to three consecutive doses of the drug to squirrel monkeys and baboons. The doses were administered two hours apart in a bid to mimic the way some all-night clubbers use the drug.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...s-disease.html
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contradicting news? from BBC
Ecstasy 'relieves Parkinson's Disease'.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1169980.stm