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Announcing the Cure for Parkinson’s Disease Looking for doctors to try a new treatment and send observations (Pardon the length of this document. You cannot describe a useful brain theory in a sound bite.) Why announce on the Internet? (Part 6) This comes in 7 parts. Do not apply any of this information without reading all 7 parts. Each part will have words at the end saying "continued in Parkinson’s Disease Cure’ Part [#]" for those whose servers might truncate these documents. Table of Contents Introduction................................................................ ...........................Part 1 Some of my theory helpful to understanding this treatment....................Part 2 Some of my theory helpful to understanding this treatment (cont.).........Part 3 The Treatment................................................................... ....................Part 4 The Treatment (cont.)..................................................................... .......Part 5 Why announce it this way on the Internet?.............................................Part 6 Why approach Parkinson’s disease first?................................................Part 7 Why announce on the Internet? My theory can show why people get different responses to the same medications but still have brains that work in the exact same way. (Are you willing to believe that placebo effect could be created by one and only one process working the same in all brains? Thus making a universal treatment possible?) It is no wonder this approach has not been tried. It requires going against all natural animal instincts: to get better you have to seek pain instead of pleasure. (And there is an interesting paradox that occurs here because it turns out that the chemicals associated with seeking pleasure in the brain are what trigger the withdrawal.) This theory and its implications in interpreting data indicates enormous change in current medical and biological understanding and will incur a lot of resistance as the many facets are argued out and the appropriate studies are produced to examine these ideas. This extremely slow track is not the way to introduce these ideas when I can produce a new promising treatment at this time. Unfortunately the current system of seeking approval for a new treatment in the United States is not ideally suited to this process. The last thing the current system would discover would be a way to facilitate withdrawal because an increase in the troublesome symptoms would indicate a discontinuation of the treatment. The drug companies are not in the habit of developing treatments that wean you off of their medications in a short time or treatments that use smaller amounts of inexpensive medication that is already sold by other companies. I’ve been wrestling with this problem for a year and the best way to introduce this treatment and make it possible for this to be confirmed by doctors working with these patients is to put it out to as many places as possible on the Internet. Somebody somewhere will give this a try and I would like to get feedback from these people by e-mail. ([log in to unmask]) (It is very important to follow all of the instructions concerning this treatment.) (I will only respond to specific questions about the treatment. Don’t clog my e-mail with any other messages please.) It should be legal and moral to try this approach in any country. The medication used is considered quite safe at much higher dosages. The medication increases dopamine in the system of Parkinson’s patients who are thought to have a deficiency in that substance. When current treatments are no longer working for these people it would be wrong not to give something new a chance. The psychiatric/medical community has become particularly resistant to suggestions of change or big new ideas coming from anyone but one of their own. (Proper degrees or affiliations.) So much information is out there these days that it is easier to eliminate reading material by making a judgment first about the prestige and credentials of the messenger rather than judging the ideas alone on their merit no matter who is submitting the proposal. Professionals in this field can have a particular arrogance unique from those in other fields in that they might tend to dismiss any attempt to suggest new theory as a symptom of grandiosity if that idea comes from somebody who is neither a doctor nor an academic. This is the area of study with the most likelihood that, instead of ideas being debated first and then a decision made about the sanity of the thinker, the sanity of the thinker is considered first (based only on the person’s willingness to bring forth any idea without the proper credentials) and the ideas discounted without any consideration at all. This atmosphere can also make those who do have the right credentials much more timid about suggesting ideas that go against "current medical understanding." Medicine has discovered cures for very few disorders and diseases. The best they get in most cases is a statistical advantage in symptoms possible only with continued ingestion of medications with various side-effects and toxicity. People may be living longer but they may be suffering from more problems than in the past. There are no unified theories explaining the nervous system and behavior. They don’t know why these medications work and don’t work on different people. Is there yet enough success to warrant such arrogance? There will be those who say this document is nonsense without really considering these ideas or (more important) trying this treatment and seeing if it works. (Some of the people who will be outspoken against this will not read the entire argument and will never get to this paragraph.) Yes, it is dangerous sending this information out over the Internet. If I’m wrong it will be hard to bring it back. Ideas can take on a life of their own on the Internet. I’ve been worrying about this for over a year. But I see patients discussing all kinds of questionable medication treatments and theories on the Internet. My ideas should have the same rights of expression. But this is a scary treatment. It is impossible for anyone, doctor or not, to tell if a person is getting worse with a particular expression of symptoms or getting better but in a state of withdrawal. But this has to be the moral experiment. This version of the treatment requires medication with a history of being very safe when used at dosages much higher than required by this treatment. I’ve known about this treatment for about 15 months now. In that time I’ve approached many doctors and have found none willing to listen to any of my ideas. They have not discounted any ideas because they have not heard any ideas. In every case I was asked about my credentials and then they told me they were not interested in using their time by listening to my ideas. Several have told me to put it into writing and said that I could send them the writing. I have written hundreds of pages and doing so it has become clear to me that the logic I’ve used in my thinking to produce this theory will require thousands of pages as I consider every disorder in the DSM and reinterpret many findings. (There are many psychological theories and disciplines.) Ideas that I can understand quite quickly in visual/spatial/mathematical terms become monster intellectual obstacles when trying to express all of the implications in words. I’ve had to do my best learning the language of the medical community during this time so I wouldn’ t be as quickly dismissed for not using all the right jargon in trying to make my case. (I’ve also discovered that there are some problems in the actual language used that makes it difficult to find these answers: problems in English (all language) and problems in the medical language created by current theories and creating current theories accepted by the orthodoxy.) I will be sending this to as many places as possible through the Internet. All who receive this from me will remain on my mailing list. I can’t risk not trying to get new important information to those who I’ve sent this document. I will not debate my theory with anyone at this time and might remain quiet about theory for some time. I will probably give "no comment" until this treatment is properly tested. I will save my responses for those who have questions about the treatment and who have new information about the treatment or new observations that interest me in this area. I could get enough e-mail that it will be impossible to respond to people. I could get enough response that my server might have problems with the volume. (Please be aware that I, like anyone else, could have a problem with my computer or server and miss information or not be able to get information out.) Any new information that appears important will be sent out to my mailing list. I will inform all as quickly as possible about any alarming responses to this treatment. I will ignore those who just want to predict what will or will not work without trying this treatment. I want to hear about the progress of all who are going through this treatment. I will put a disclaimer on any information that I receive and put back out through the Internet if it is only coming to me through the Internet. Cyberspace is filled with unreliable information. No doctor has been willing to talk to me about my ideas and one went so far as to diagnose me for bringing up the subject. I only told him: "I think I have some new ideas that might be important to professionals concerning behavior." He immediately asked me about my degrees and schooling and medical background and I answered him. He then told me that I was delusional based on that statement alone. He heard none of my ideas and was not willing to listen to any ideas but was willing to diagnose me only by my willingness to suggest that I might have a valuable idea in his field. (And there was no grandiosity in the way I brought up the subject.) I’ve had only slightly better luck in getting the attention of academics. An MIT professor wrote that he found my ideas interesting but he did not have enough background in certain areas of specialty required to pursue these ideas. The thing is that the theory will never fit within one specialty and requires so much coordination between various fields of study that it is impossible to spark a dialogue on the thing when working within the current scientific environment. (Specialization is one of the obstacles to coming up with the answers. Concerning the DSM, for instance, the current trend is to look for patterns that identify various groups as different. They therefore "identify" a new "disorder" about once a month. This focus on what makes different "disorders" unique from one another makes it impossible to find a cure which requires looking for what is similar among the many disorders.) I recently decided to just put this all out on the Internet after meeting with another professor who teaches about neurology. Arriving at a meeting which was supposed to give me a couple of hours to make my case I was told that we would only have minutes and so I should just summarize. These ideas can’t be communicated in "sound bites" but I gave it my best. He was not a particularly good listener and interrupted a lot and laughed at some of my ideas at first. When I tried to support my ideas he became a little better at listening and he asked to meet with me again. One of our problems that caused him to interrupt a lot was the fact that I had to create some of my own terminology to put the theory together and I had to redefine a couple of words on my own terms. I told him what I meant by these words but it kept stopping him from getting my points quickly. But early in the meeting I knew this was not the person to help me introduce these ideas. When it appeared that he was not intending to listen to any ideas and was looking for a way to get out of giving me his time, I told him that I’ve come up with a new treatment and that it appears to have cured some people. He said "I don’t care." All he cared about, he said, was about theories and ideas and whether they make sense with prior research and understanding. Many academics are only looking for information that agrees with their own published theses. It is dangerous for them to support ideas that prove them wrong. My ideas suggest much change in thinking. Why would a person who teaches about medical subject matter not care about a new cure? But such a thing is possible in the current world of specialization. So I’m putting this out to as many people as possible at the same time and letting it take its course. Many will ignore this document. Many will discount these ideas without much consideration. But at least some will pay attention and the treatment will be tried. If I’m wrong, these ideas will eventually die and that is fine. (In that case I’ve written some good science fiction.) If I’m right, they will be accepted eventually. It is worth the risk. My theory is massive. It basically requires arguing a different understanding of every behavior or disease listed in the DSM-IV. It almost requires a new language to explain. It redefines a few words because of some flaws in our language around some of these processes. A different interpretation of the observations of neurotransmitter activity is needed. It requires a bit of philosophy about how human social interactions, and conflicts inherent in our language, increase the problem of stress and mental illness in humans over other animals. It requires a simple evolutionary explanation showing the logic of how this theory makes for a process leading to the greatest survival of any species. It will take years and thousands of pages to write it all out and argue its validity against the many approaches and philosophies that it will contradict (while using all of the observations that led to these other philosophies). This theory will lead to countless studies and experiments. I’m afraid to say what else I believe will be helped by this treatment. It "feels" too good to be true. I’d be happy keeping this to myself, continuing to enjoy the pleasurable intellectual pastime. But it would be wrong to keep the treatment I’ve discovered as a secret and so I have to risk judgment and go public with this. I’ve been working on building up enough confidence to present this theory for about 15 months. Reasoning through these theories to be sure I had something worth reporting has required enormous mental activity, day and night, for over a year. This discovery has been a burden. [CONTINUED in ‘ Parkinson’s Disease Cure’ Part 7]