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Does anyone share my growing concern at the current obsession with anti- oxidants, and the quest for more and more powerful examples of such things? It seems to me that the story goes something like this: 1/ Free Radicals let loose inside a Dopamine-producing cell can cause cell death, and if enough cells die, Parkinson's Disease will result. 2/ How do we stop the formation of free radicals? - bring in anti-oxidants. That will create an environment unsuitable for free radicals. 3/ If there is no noticeable effect this must mean that we haven't added enough anti-oxidants, so bring up bigger guns and we will blast the little critters out of the brain! 4/ Who noticed the flaw in the logic of item 3/ ? If there is no noticeable effect,( and so far there isn't), it could also be that free radicals are not THE cause of PD. Now don't misunderstand me, I am perfectly willing to accept the hypothesis that free radicals exist, and I have been taking Vitamin E for the past 6 or 8 years (I caught one of my neurologist friends chewing some: he told me the story, and in a spirit of 'Well why not - it might work' I followed his example. 5/ During that 6 or 8 years, my PD has not deviated one bit in its downward trend, and I know of no reports claiming to demonstrate such an effect. Who remembers MPTP? - A Designer Drug that went bad and knocked-out every dopamine-producing cell in the Substantia Nigra caused a sensation at the time, and everyone started rushing about looking for MPTP in the environment. If I recall correctly, Selegeline was introduced because it prevented MPTP from doing its cell-zapping trick. (The other claims to fame of selegiline came along later as a useful (?) bonus). 6/ The point is: just because something COULD cause PD, doesn't mean it does cause PD. Let's note the facts, keep taking the Vitamin E, and lift our heads up a little higher and see if anything else is happening. After all, the Truth is Out There.... (Not down here). Regards -- Brian Collins <[log in to unmask]>