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one role that we can be active playing is lobbying how research is funded. this is in addition to lobbying for funds. the "micromanagement" by Congress of U.S. research activity by NIH may be a deflector excuse to increase funding. The research funding recommendation of the March 7th satellite symposium was to not fund Parkinsonism research; rather, to fund neurodegenerative diseases research; and, to fund the "best ideas". Determining the "best ideas" is a process that is utopian and requires disclosure before patenting so will never happen in reality in our capitalist, reward-seeking, social culture. Perhaps we who are interested can influence cooperative motivation into how to lobby creating a better likelihood that will become a winner for us patients, the researchers, the drug manufacturers, and the NIH and politicians who have been spending money from taxes and shareholders to "do good". There are numerous interesting facets of researching neurodegeneration - the conjectures the experts are debating relevant to the etiology process(es) currently. The education of all of us is important. If the separate spheres of expertise interact, the maximum benefit will accrue - especially if best efforts are made to produce concise and accurate presentations of the state of the art (including the leading conjectures and rationale) from each expert. It is my hope that the interested, educated, parkinsonians be allowed, encouraged, invited into the mainstream of the scientific and medical researches in etiology, symptomology, treatment protocol, medicines efficacy, drug trials, et cetera - because we can benefit and contribute to each other. Some amount of Serendip exists in having interested parties interact via internet web sites, PARKINSN listserver, other methods of learning what is known. New algorithms of treatments and new drug trials and surgical procedures results might benefit from patients and interested persons assisting via brainstorming - as well as via political involvements relevant to FDA and federal funding. The levodopa ingestion, stomach effects, passage into the small intestine, absorption into the blood, transit to the brain and elsewhere, transit to various loci in the striatum, effects is worth some effort to be presented as a monograph. This would educate and allow and encourage further study which might be of much value if levodopa remains the primary drug. The interactivity of drug ingestion with the rest of diet by the patient is obviously of much import. There are conflicting recommendations as well as no recommendations at all - sometimes, incorrect or incomplete advice. Dopamine is critical to mentation and emotion in directly affecting and effecting these characteristics of the brain and nerve networks. A specific question is: what drug efficacy - effectiveness information exists on selegiline hydrochloride? What drugs in clinical trials that are clearly working well? The recent information about the strain of mice without the enzyme that inactivates the dopamine and returns it to "storage" must provoke some discussion. The "I have a dream" theme might be this listserv incubating do-it-ourselves monographs that are FAQs become "algorithms" edited and re-edited into sections of a cyber-earth encyclopedia that the cyber-library-of-Congress forms and maintains for physicians, pharmacists, patients, and students can access. This could start from volunteer-prepared home-page monographs by a few of us. Or, it may already exist in some measure at a medical school? or the database of a clinic or research physician. The skill of editing everything one can collect on a specific topic into one concise monograph can be learned by doing. Whether cyber-earth will have a super-encyclopedia of the whole of human knowledge that is available to all without cost is unknown, but I "see" that as perhaps the most efficient cyber-textbook to make education available to all to any depth desired by the researcher-student. (Much of this cyber-textbook will not be something so confined as text - lectures, demonstration experiments, videos and interactive multimedia experiences with URLs to who knows what will be there.) ron 1936, dz PD 1984 Ronald F. Vetter <[log in to unmask]> http://www1.ridgecrest.ca.us/~rfvetter/