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There have been a number of posts on the possible effect of pesticides on the incidence of Parkinson's. Unfortunately the cause of PD is unknown. While it is tempting to attribute the disease to a specific cause, the only way to do this correctly is with painstaking statistical studies. The corollary, of course, is that if the cause was known a cure could be found or at least the disease could be avoided. As an example: Exposure to pesticides causes PD? Maybe yes maybe no. What connects the two? It would seem that if there is truly a causal relation the incidence of PD would be much higher. Similarly, there have been suggestions of Head Trauma causes PD (Mohammed Ali), and discussions on the list by those who have had trauma and PD. What about those that have had trauma but no PD? Then there is the historical incidence of PD before pesticides were used.The point is nobody really knows the cause of PD and therefore it is essentially impossible to speculate on causes. It can be wasteful and diluting any effort toward a cure to latch onto a cause and try to establish a correlation. The example is Electromagnetic (EM) radiation from power lines. A huge effort has resulted in no correlation with any disease but it has resulted in a terrible waste of valuable resources. Just as in PD, clusters have been found but no cause and effect. The purpose of this note is to warn about jumping to conclusions, let the scientists do their work, and hopefully an answer will emerge. The purpose is also to state that statistics are the only way to get a handle on diseases such as PD, even though some will argue that you can prove anything with statistics especially when the result is not to their liking. K. F. Etzold CG Carline ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn