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I attended the the Tampa PD symposium of 6/14 and found it quite informative as did my wife ( my outstanding and enlightened caregiver). It was a well orchestrated production -- I was fascinated by the the people and the hardware that were assembled to present a live, interactive, coast-to-coast satellite hook up. Because of the information that gets distributed on this List, I was aware of much that was presented. In summary, I judge that video tapes of the presentations and the accompanying Q/As would be excellant materials for local support groups and PD associations to lend to newly diagnosed members. From the types and the significant number of questions that were handled locally in Tampa, I judge that: a) a significant number of the 400+ Tampa audience found facts and issues in the presentations that were relevant to them and of which they were unaware, b) we List subscribers are, as evidenced by our participation in the List, much more intense in our pursuit of PD knowledge than most PD victims and therefore I believe it is in their( nonlisters) best interests to be exposed to a program like that of 6/14. I scoured my notes for a reference as to how the APDA will handle any video tapes of the sessions and came up empty. Time to write a letter. A few interesting items that were new to me, but perhaps not to most of you were: About 50% of PDers suffer from some PD-related mental/emotional disfunction. About 25% of the interviews with new patients result in a diagnosis of "atypical Parkinsons".( no/little tremor, significant movement disorders, and generally no respose to sinemet). Having a friend with Atypical P, I know of the difficulties of receiving an accurate diagnosis in the early phase of this affliction. The message from the satellite and my own observations are, get several opinions from skilled neurologists. Autopsies of the brains of Alzheimers and Parkinsons sufferers show many similar pathologies making one wonder if these diseases are not two extremes of the same affliction. Lewys disease may be the intermediate case. All of the speakers were most emphatic in their recommendation that exercise extremely benefical both physically and psychologically. Probably, for me, the most exciting element was a short video of a person, suffereing from, at least, extreme tremor, who had an electrode imbedded in his brain, this electrode being connected to a pacemaker-like device. When an ac signal( no details provided)was output by the pacemaker the tremors ceased accompanied by a quick transition from frowns to smiles.Deep brain stimulation ? This example I believe came from Grenoble and Benabib, et al. (An aside, thanks John C. for the recent list of references re this subject, came just in time.) In talking to Bob Hauser, U of S. FL. and a moderator of the local Tampa site,there have at least been suggestions that dopamine deficiency can disrupt a stabilizing chemical feedback in the brain. Also there have been suggestions that dopamine deficiencies turn a normally deterministic system in the brain to one that is chaotic and destabilizing. By analogy with recent experiments on the application of alternating forces to chaotic electrical and mechanical systems systems and the resultant return to deterministic behavior , one wonders whether the aforementioned " pacemaker" results don't have the same sort of effect. Any other retired physicists out there who want to join with me to look into these speculations? As drugs that surpress tissue rejection are given along with fetal tissue transplants, there is some question about whether these rather active chemicals jeapordize the success of this procedure. It is unfortunate that the number of sites was so limited. It also seems strange that , by the absence of comments on it, so few List subscribers seem to have attended. Don H