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Lanier, I'm sorry that you are leaving the list due to all the stem cell talk and politics. Although I sick of it too, it's important that we discuss this within the Parkinson's community so that we can make informed decisions. Unfortunately, the U.S. federal government out spends the private sector by orders of magnitude for Parkinson's research. Congress appropriates the funds and our activism keeps congress focused on our needs. This is the way I anticipate that it will continue unless list members over throw the government and make me king. (Note to the FBI and National Secuirty Agency. I'm just kidding.) Research institutions want to do leading edge, high visibility research. Bio-tech is a hot field and research institutions want to be associated with this emerging field. It is the type of stuff that will bring in federal grant money as well as private endowments for research wings. In addition, top notch researchers will find another institution if they don't get their way. So that is why you will get prestigious institutions like Harvard Medical School lobbying for embryonic stem cell research. So it's about money. Money comes from the federal government and appropriations are political. So this makes it very important that we understand the science of embryonic stem cell research so that we can make our voices heard as a community and as individuals both pro and con in an informed and intelligent manner. Eveyone has a right to express their own scientific, moral and religious beliefs. We then rule by majority which means there will always be a group that will be unhappy and sometimes abusive. It also means that there will be groups lobbying on capitol hill claiming that they represent the majority. Now for my humble opinion. Embryonic stem cell research will some day lead to a cure for Parkinson's just like atomic fusion will some day elimnate our dependence on foreign oil. At 54, I guess it could happen in my lifetime, but I'm not betting my 401K. So what do we risk by being the poster children for embryonic stem cell research? Right out of the box we alienate a portion of congress and their constituency. As long os one of these members isn't on the appropriations committee, it might not be so bad. And who needs the constituency if we're getting big bucks from the federal government. So we get the big bucks sent to NIH ear marked for PD and they distribute it. Since we are the poster children for embryonic stem cell research, we must want all these funds to go into basic science for stem cell research. This leads to a cure for PD and we all live happily ever after. So what's wrong this fairy tale? To begin with Parkinson's isn't a disease, it's a set of symptoms. It's idiopathic. We don't know how many pathologies (diseases) eventually will produce these symptoms. In lay terms it's a designer disease. Everyone seems to be a little different. But I'm sure some of you are saying Phil, you idiot these symptoms are caused by death of cells in the substantia nigra that produce dopamine. Of course probably less than 1% of the PD population has had a PET scan to confirm that there is indeed a reduction in uptake of dopamine. So our diagnosis can be and sometimes is wrong. But Phil, if stem cells are used to regnerate those cells we're cured and can ride off into the sunset. Unfortunately, the stem cell work done to try this resulted in uncontrolable dyskinesias and psychosis in some patients, the same as that seem with high doses of levodopa. So unlike diabetes, it isn't just a chemical deficiency. In fact, what we also lose is the projections from the substantia nigra into the striatum (caudate and putamen) that carry the dopamine produced in the substantia nigra to the striatum. These projections constitute part of the front end wiring into the basil ganglia. Now since one neuron can project onto as many as 1000 other neurons, these interconnections can be quite complex. Indeed as the nervous system develops, some pathways are exercised more and become stronger while others die off. This is effectively how the nervous system programs itself not only during gestation, but also during early childhood development. So now that we have that figured out, we can get stem cells to regenerate the wiring and then we can reprogram it to restore function. So let's get started with the programming specification for the basil ganglia. So let's write down the functions that the basil ganglia perform. Well obviously PD is a movement disorder so it must control movement. But in normals fMRI has shown that activity in the basil ganglia begins before the movement is initiated and teminates when the movement starts. But in PD patients, the activity in the basil ganglia continues throughout the movement. So it seems to be crucial that we understand the differences in the wiring between the controls and the PD patients. Although everyone is in the brain donation program, we'll need to wait years before enough of these geezers die off to really come up with the cure. But wait, we have the technology to remove the genetic material from one species and replace it with the genetic material from a second species and then return it to the original host for gestation. In this way, we can sacrifice these fetuses at different points in their gestation and learn how the basil ganglia develop. We can then use this knowledge to program the repaired basil ganglia and cure PD. Hopefully, we won't have to allow the fetus to develop too far during early childhood development before we discover how to program the basil ganglia. So we have fixed the movement disoder. Now about 43% of the PD population seems to suffer from disorders of the autonomic nervous system. This system controls things like heart rate, respiration, temperature control (sweating), etc. The basil ganglia don't appear to be wired to the autonomic nervous system. But since the stem cell fairy can fix anything, I'm sure she will fix this too. Now to other non-motor features of PD. In the range of 40-60% of PD patients develop mood disorders. These appear to be associated with reduced levels of seretonin and norepinephrine. Compared to the motor aspects of PD, these psychiatric features have been poorly studied. About 30% of PD patients will eventually develop cognitive disfunction. This appears to be related to reduced levels of acetycholine. Although it is known the basil ganglia do play some role in cognitive processing, the nature of this role is even less understood than their role in movement. This is another highly under investigated area. A year and a half ago, a representative from PAN came in and told our support group that a cure from PD was five years away if congress appropriated the funding for research. Even with my limited knowledge about PD, I had to question the validity of that projection. The PAN representitive indicated that it come from a researcher testifying before congess lobbying for an increase in funding. I left the meeting scratching my head. Why hadn't I seen anything about this in the literature? This year the PAN respresentative was promoting advocacy for stem cell research and had brought along a neurologist to technically support her position. When I indicated that I had difficulty supporting embryonic stem cell research since I didn't feel that the ethical stands were in place to properly manage this research, I was almost jeered by part of the attending membership. At the end of the meeting, the neurologist thanked me for speaking up and indicated that he agreed with my position. Once again, I left the meeting scratching my head. So my humble opinion of embryonic stem cell research is that it is a solution looking for a problem to solve. Unfortunately, if we use all our PD allocated dollars to learn how to morph stem cells, we won't have the dollars to investigate the pathologies of the motor and non-motor features of PD. We'll have a cure, but a cure for what? So to me the issue is not about re-cycling the refuse from fertility clinicals, but what is the ethical use of that refuse. And in the grand zero sum game of funds allocated to PD research, how much of those funds should be allocated to basic stem cell research and how much to the many other aspects of the disease that need to be investigated before we will really have a cure. So Lanier and others, you can leave the list, but please become knowledgable and make your opinions known. Otherwise, all you can hope for is that the basil ganglia fairy will leave some stem cells under your pillow. Good night. The humble Phil Gesotti ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn