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Hi Janet and all! I hope all is well with you? I have to comment on the article Janet posted: Those experiments are NOT unique! We even do them in little Sweden! :) There is a team in the south (Lund) that have done 18 implants, also on American citizens. (You might have heard about the heoroinists who took MPTP, an destroyed their Substantia Nigra? Two or three of those had surgery performed by the Swedish team while the fetal cell research ban was in place in the US.) I went to a Young onset meeting this weekend, and one of the lecturers was the guy who did the surgery. Amazingly iteresting! The most interesting fact was that the implant survives and grows AND is not affected by the PD! We saw PET scans taken before surgery, after one year and after two years. The results were so good I culdn't believe my eyes. Four(?) of the 18 patients take NO medication. The others got better, but not as good. So: we're not there yet, but I do hope that the coming 10-20(?) years will bring us great improvements, if the teams all over the world can cooperate and join their knowledge. I think that if the researchers use PET scans, the sham surgeries will not be needed. Then they can see the dopamine content of the brain. It feels awful to imagine somebody getting a bleeding in the brain and perhaps lose some ability, just to give the researcher something to compare with. Brrr.... - I hope they find the reason why some don't get full effect. Soon. /John. --------- Hints of Success in Fetal Cell Transplants April 22, 1999: WASHINGTON -- In a small but well-controlled study using tissue from aborted fetuses to treat Parkinson's disease, a team of researchers announced on Wednesday that they have relieved the symptoms of some patients, a discovery that experts say suggests that scientists are on the verge of being able to repair the damaged brain. The study involved only 40 patients, just 20 of whom received the transplants, and the improvements, while significant, were dramatic in only a few. It remains to be seen how long they will last. Those who benefited were better able to move and experienced less stiffness before taking their daily medication. Some were able to switch to less potent drugs. But the findings are tentative. And the experiment, the first of its kind, (snip)