A considerable amount of energy is being devoted, rightly in my opinion, to new possibilities in discovering the causes and developing cures for PD.We still do not know what causes cell death in the brain. When the cause of the death of the dopamine cells in the substantia nigra is discovered and the reason demylenation occurs in MS, Parkinson's patients and MS patients and their caregivers will rejoice. But their rejoicing will be a selfless one because many of them will be too far advanced or too old to benefit from the discovery.And just because the cause(s) has been discovered, it does not mean that cures will be found immediately. Well, in a perfect world they might be, but we all know that our world is not perfect.What this is leading up to is the utter lack of attention that is being paid to therapy access. There are palliative therapies in the market place that work and work well - effective and efficacious to the rigorously-minded. DBS neurosurgery, for example. Why are there not list members pursuing the expansion of this real winner.. Some of te things that could be done:
- lobby for more training places for neurosurgeons and the subspecialty, functional neurosurgery- lobby for more funding for these procedures- lobby to ave them universally approved by HMOs for reimbursement purposes- ensure that both neurologists and neurosurgeons use formal checklists to determine who goes on the surgery list- ensure that hospitals make funding available from their global budgetsOr am I all wet?