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The Age, Australia The Parkinson's secret July 10 2003 By Paul Kalina Waiting 16 months for Michael J. Fox's people to call his people, documentary director and journalist Jerry Thompson stumbled upon a medical mystery. Thompson had been commissioned by Canadian television to make a documentary about Fox, that country's favourite son, who had recently announced that he had Parkinson's disease. His brief was to follow Fox as he retired from Spin City and an illustrious acting career to start campaigning for sufferers. While his request to interview Fox was handballed from lawyers to agents to minders, Thompson, who had previously made science documentaries, began to research the background of his story. He contacted a prominent neurologist, Dr Donald Calne. "You realise, don't you, that Michael isn't the only person on that film crew who is sick?" Dr Calne asked him. Dr Calne said there were at least three other people among the 50-odd crew from the television series Leo and Me, where Fox landed his first role in 1976, who had developed Parkinson's. It dawned on Thompson that he might know one of those people. His hunch was confirmed, and eventually his detective work led him to the others. He realised that four people from a crew of 50 contracting the same illness was an odd anomaly. "What fascinated me most was that I, like most other laymen, assumed that a disease like Parkinson's had a genetic cause." But what he learned was that genes were a factor in only 15 per cent of Parkinson's cases. "The essence of Dr Calne's research," explains Thompson, "is that you may have a greater or lesser ability to fight off an attack by some toxin in the environment. That ability to fight or resist or recover is possibly a function of genes. "Dr Calne believes that genes may load the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger." Thompson soon unearthed other notable discoveries about the possible causes of Parkinson's. Many years earlier, in California, a batch of overcooked synthetic heroin triggered an overnight outbreak of Parkinson's in the individuals who had used it. Dr William Langston discovered that the overheated chemicals had morphed into a deadly neurotoxin. He also stumbled upon Dr Oliver Sacks's research into residents of Guam who suffered a massive outbreak of Parkinson's, along with Alzheimer's and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease), during World War II, after eating an unrefined version of a traditional flour made from the nuts of a tropical plant. "Two generations of neurologists have tried to figure out what causes Guam disease. They refer to it as the Rosetta stone of neurology." Thompson says Dr Calne's theory is that toxins attack cells in the brain, and although some cells are killed outright, enough survive to disguise the symptoms of the disease. "It's the long slow death of the wounded cells that gives the impression of an ongoing disease, when in fact that could have occurred in one single attack, a single incident that could have been a virus, like the flu, or encephalitis, or a dose of botched heroin. "That's the bad news. The good news is we're getting to a point where you might actually be able to repair damage, and that's what those people who have Parkinson's are waiting for." The rehabilitation of one of the men who took the toxic heroin indicates that stem-cell therapy may provide a breakthrough, says Thompson, though he hastens to add that since the making of the documentary a study involving stem cell injections resulted in patients producing too much dopamine, the "chemical messenger" that is mostly absent from the brain of Parkinson's sufferers, with harmful side-effects. Aware of the difficulties Thompson was having reaching Fox, the documentary's investors had reluctantly agreed in the meantime to a science-focused film without the star. When the requests finally reached Fox, he immediately agreed to participate. "My theory is that when he went public with his problem he was swamped by everyone in American television. Almost all the interviews were showbiz type interviews; you know, we're going to miss your character and how will Spin City continue without you? "Nobody wanted to talk about the science, and Michael had something to say. This was the first time he got to talk about what was on his mind, the science, what are we going to do about Parkinson's, how are we going to pay for it?" Thompson credits Fox with motivating an enormous number of people into finding a cure for the disease. "The charisma, the presence that he has, is a formidable tool, and I think he figures that as long as he has the health, the wherewithal to do it, he's going to put it to good use." At the same time, Thompson realises that for Parkinson's sufferers there's the anguished wait to see if the cure will be found in time to help them. Yet he has few doubts that a cure will be found. "Before we actually started shooting I went to a neurology convention in New Orleans and there were six or seven thousand doctors there. They were so excited, when you eavesdropped in a coffee break you could feel the energy and enthusiasm. They know that they are on the edge and that somebody is going to make the breakthrough. It's like dominoes and it's a race; they all want to be the ones to cross the finish line and say `I'm the one who got the cure.' " The Parkinson's Enigma screens on Thursday at 10pm on the ABC. SOURCE: The Age, Australia http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/10/1057430254847.html * * * Reference: The Parkinson's Enigma http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/HTMLTemplate/!ctvNews/News/Docs/doc_parkinsons.html "cell"ing A CURE http://gainsville.fitdv.com/new/section_health/articles2/parkinsons.html Parkinson's 'Clusters' Getting a Closer Look (NYTimes May, 2002) http://www.calisafe.org/_disc1/0000003e.htm Was TV star’s disease born of BC virus? The Globe and Mail, March 22, 2002, pages A1, A11 http://www.student.math.uwaterloo.ca/~stat231/stat231_01_02/w02/section3/EM0222.pdf * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn