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I think it is quite misleading to state and conclude that the only place that a cure for Parkinson's disease will come from is NIH. History demonstrates that nearly all clinical pharmacological products and therapies, including high tech diagnostic and interventional tools, are brought to market(this means to the patient) by the private sector. Some of you may not like to hear this, but this is our system. It is also the reason that America is way ahead of other countries around the world in this area. This is not to say that NIH doesn't perform a valuable and necessary function. The corrolary to the above is the recognition of the fact that the private sector does not perform the necessary basic biomedical research that enables us to learn more about how our different bodily systems function, etc. Simply stated, the difference is basic versus clinical or applied research. Why do I make this distinction? Because we are ignoring that role of the private sector in developing better therapies for Parkinson's disease. We need th assure that R&D is maintained in the private sector and the only way to do this is to assure that the companies will have a market for their new and innovative products, lest we will not ever have those products. In other words we may be throwing the baby out with the bath water. I any of you are interested in pursuing the discussion further, please post an appropriate response. Larry Hoffheimer