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Different Strokes For Different Folks. For those PIE listmembers who like to follow postings by Judith and Janet of news releases or articles about PD research, it helps to know how the material reflects the agenda of its particular authors. Case in point is the news of a "breakthrough" in single-photon-emission computed tomography (SPECT) which enables the scanning technique to detect incipient PD before its clinical symptoms appear. This release appears to report the same event as the paper by Benamer et al in J Neur N'surg 2000;68:263: (CSR MAR 00) (Janet, check me out on this). Use of SPECT depends upon an injected radioactive tracer or marker, which in this case acts like dopamine in the brain so that SPECT can map the distribution of "real" dopamine for diagnostic purposes. The news release is about the success of a new dopamine tracer, which the authors' sponsor hopes to market profitably, and attract stockholder investment in the firm. You might not notice that the science article is about the same event, but here the authors are seeking credit for all the tedious clinical and lab work they did, presumably to attract more research grant money so they can continue to do what they like to do (a completely honorable objective), but the abstract doesn't even mention the name of the new tracer they used, nor its corporate sponsor. Cheers, Joe -- J. R. Bruman (818) 789-3694 3527 Cody Road Sherman Oaks, CA 91403-5013