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Dear fellow PWP's and anyone who will listen: Joe and I returned from a tiring, but I hope successful, trip to Washington for the PAN Forum. We had some good meetings with Texas Senators Hutchinson and Gramm's people. In addition to various other Congressmen and women, we visited Bill Young's chief of staff. Young is the chair of the Appropriations committee in the House. We also had an informative, encouraging meeting with David Beier, the domestic policy advisor for Vice President Gore. Our objectives were to ask support to help fulfill the promise made by the Udall Act of 1997, to double the funding for NIH in the FY2000 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill. We also proposed a $25 million dollar increase for NIEHS, (Environment) a $50 million increase for NINDS and $25 million for the Dept of Defense, reiterating in the strongest possible report language, that it is the will of the United States Congress that those funds be spent on focused research to find a cure for PD. We also heard from scientists all over the country on the latest research being done and that PD is the most curable of the brain diseases and that they could find that cure if they had the funds necessary for research. As in the past, we left with optimism but also with somewhat heavy hearts, full of frustration, with the knowledge that the money this country would find to help people that just had suffered a hurricane or other national disaster doesn't consider it a disaster that every nine minutes another person is diagnosed with this horribly debilitating disease. With the estimated costs of Medicare, disability, lost wages, etc. etc. etc. to our country... why don't they see that there couldn't be a more compassionate, more compelling, more economical way to spend our tax dollars! Why aren't all of us doing everything humanly possible to help ourselves? Go to the next Forum, collect Pennies for Parkinson's, get involved, write to your Representatives and tell them your story and that you want a cure. And I guess we'll go back next year and the next until they either find a cure for Parkinson's and I don't have to go back or they don't find a cure and I'm not able to go back. nina