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This is an excerpt from a letter written by a friend whose husband has ALS and has been on a respirator for 8 years while they search tirelessly - no I can't say that - cuz they do get tired : relentlessly for an answer or a cure. Since the time it was written, it has been discovered that ALS is caused by a virus made up of several other viruses (I am unsure of how that is, but apparently it is how viruses adapt / mutate). For purposes of discussing the mechanism of becoming ill with a degenerative disease, I would ask that here we equate toxin and virus. If this is way off base, and someone who knows more about this can explain it, I would appreciate it. EXCERPT: "My theory on ALS is that it is the symptom of the following: 1. Exposure to a toxin (could be any number of things from Excitotoxins to the Castor Bean). 2. This runs around in a person's system basically being handled by a healthy body but never exiting the system. 3. Something drives the body into a hypo-oxidative state (this could be hyper-oxidative) and that something could be any trauma or any excess where the body is depleted to a place where the blood brain barrier falls (much like a dam). 4. With the dam down the toxins are now present in the spinal / neuro system, where before they were protected by the blood brain barrier. 5. The onset of the deterioration begins. "For the elderly person, I believe aging allows the body to drop the blood brain barrier and thus the process is much the same. "These are MY suspicions....[ my husband's] toxin was likely the castor bean, he was exposed when he was pre-teen. I think the exhaustive triathlon training was the trauma. I do not know how long between the trauma and symptoms that were noticeable but I bet it was a couple of years. " Anyway, the action that happens in the body, i.e. the neurotransmitters meet, they interact, the by-product of that interaction is glutamate, and then [a particular] enzyme is supposed to be excreted to bind with the glutamate and then it passes out of the body. The enzyme is the problem, no enzyme, too much gluatamate, the gluatamate acts as a toxin at the site of the neurotransmitters and the transmitters begin to pull back from one another until they no longer make a connection. Hence the loss of whatever function that transmitter was responsible for, and so on." My friend says in the last ten years of communicating with many many ALS patients, every one of them can point to a trauma of some kind as a marker for the beginning of the disease process. Is this a possible model for neurological disorders of a certain kind? (I can say that I stayed in a very stressful --emotionally and mentally-- situation for 10 years. I wonder if at some point the ol' body just wore out.) If this is a valid model, and I cannot tell if it is or not, maybe there is some room for PD to be the result of a virus / toxic process. And here's another thought: I ran a veterinary hospital with my then husband for --yes you guessed it-- 10 years. An interesting note which can be corrected by the veterinarian on the list if I am wrong, is that dogs used to be vaccinated with Measles vaccine for protection against dog distemper. If these viruses are supposed to be species specific, how can it be that this was a successful practice? Dog distemper affects the nervous system. Does Measles?