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Phil,

Another reason to be hopeful is the baby boomers.  The big
pharmaceutical companies are surely aware that the number of PWP will
dramatically increase during the next 10-20 years.  I'd be very
surprised if they aren't focusing much of their research on the
treatment of diseases typically associated with the elderly.  The first
to come up with the next big advancement since sinemet will cash in big
time.

Keith Chancey 45/13 months


Phil Tompkins wrote:
>
> Despite the failure so far to achieve full funding of the Udall Bill,
> despite the inability of our PD organizations to work well together,
> despite someone in the NIH fudging the research numbers to look like
> there is more PD research than there is, despite the fact that the
> age of onset is decreasing, despite the fact that PD remains poorly
> understood by the public at large, and despite the fact that my PD
> and your PD don't go away but just get worse as time passes, I remain
> hopeful that ways to arrest and reverse PD are immanent.  This is
> because of recent trends like these:
>
> * NIH appropriations as a whole are increasing.
>
> * Some NIH institutes other than NINDS, such as the Institute of
> Environmental Health Science, the Institute of Mental Health, are
> funding research in PD and/or are conducting PD laboratory research
> themselves.
>
> * The brain research effort as a whole, and research in
> neurodegenerative diseases in particular, have increased, partly due
> to the "Decade of the Brain" program, partly because that's where a
> lot of the excitement in medical research is these days.
>
> * Research efforts in diseases associated with aging have increased,
> largely due to the increasing proportion of older people in the
> population.
>
> * Considerable progress in PD research has been made in a relatively
> short time, mostly following the discovery in the early 1980's
> that MPTP causes PD and can be used to create laboratory research
> models of PD.
>
> * New companies which produce medicines based on research in such
> areas as neurotrophic growth factors and genetic engineering have
> sprung up, and these medicines are now undergoing clinical trials.
>
> We shouldn't just sit back and wait for the results of all the above
> -- we still need to work for more funding, better public
> understanding, etc.  I just want to give some reasons for hanging in
> there.
>
> Phil Tompkins
> Hoboken NJ
> age 60/dx 1990