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Great idea, Gina.  I have always thought that what we needed was a "grand
gesture" to bring attention to the needs of the PD community... something that
will bring national press coverage.

Many of the ideas presented on the list for Parkinson awareness, while worthy
in their own right, do not have that imaginative element that will make the
world sit up and take note.  In other words, we need a gimmick.  Your photo
idea could be just as effective as the AIDS quilt in educating people about PD
and garnering sympathy for our cause.

I have a few more suggestions for everyone's consideration:
1.Have PWPs, caregivers and family members send in their photos.

2. Each photo should be pasted on [or scanned onto] an 8x10 piece of paper
which includes name, number of years since onset, age at onset and a brief
statement of how PD has altered your life.  Caretakers and family would of
course, explain how your PD altered their lives
.
3. Send copies of the photo page to your congressman, senators, director of
the NIH and members of the Appropriations Committee.

4. Try to have all the photos arrive on the same day in September to make the
greatest impact.

5. If there could be a meeting that day in Washington of young onset PWPs and
some Udall supporting senators and congressmen, that would be excellent.

6. See if you can get permission to display all of the photo pages in the
Capitol building.

7. Call a press conference.  Invite Mohammed Ali, Janet Reno (she's probably
in the neighborhood), Morris Udall's family, etc., to submit photo pages and
to speak about PD and the need for research money.

I firmly believe that with a grand gesture such as this, we'll finally get
recognition (perhaps even become the disease du jour for a while). This may
seem like a lot of work but if it's divided into small parts, with different
people in charge of each part, it's definitely do-able and could finally get
some of us on the Oprah Show.

BTW, we should aim for at least 3000 different photo pages (2 each per list
member).

What do you think?
Mary Sheehan