There is always going to be someone who feels that there is a moral or ethical issue with anything. And from one person’s viewpoint that makes sense. as to you specific question, there are moral issues with the way people treat PWPs (people with Parkinson’s) and there are certainly moral and ethical positions about th PD research.

Obviously there are issues about eSCR (Embryonic Stem Cell Research) And these objections are actually shared by people within the Parkinson’s Disease community as they hope for a cure. They feel that the use of the embryonic stem cells although predominantly obtained from fertility clinics which are about to discard (throw away – dispose of – trash) these unwanted/unused stem cells because of age/viability issues with full upfront disclosure is still the taking of a life despite the fact that disposal will end that potential completely whereas the use of these stem cells in research might actually result in the saving of not just one life but possibly millions.

There are other issues as well. There is objection to the animal research which must be done in a complicated disease such as PD. There is only so much that can be done with yeast. PETA has some valid points and certainly no one is going to die if they can’t wear a fur coat. That’s vanity and not survival. I think that sometimes we really do need to draw a line. And sometimes it needs to be on the side of the animal.petasearch.org/texis/search/context.html?query=experiments&pr=UK+sites&prox=page&rorder=1000&rprox=1000&rdfreq=500&rwfreq=500&rlead=500&rdepth=0&sufs=0&order=r&cq=&cmd=context&id=49b739b0d

I admit that I cringe when I think about the animals in some studies but then I remember the photos I have seen of people in the end stages of PD or the death of people I once knew who had juvenile diabetes and various cancers. I think of all of the young people who have little hope of living to my age with Muscular Dystrophy…

There are always those fringe people who claim that people who contract chronic incurable diseases deserve what they got. but Juvenile Parkinson’s can begin at 2 years of age. what did a toddler do to deserve that fate?

Every time we do anything there can be equal and opposite moral and ethical issues. Simply expending the energy needed to use this PC and monitor to respond to your questions raises issues about the use of electricity. Even a laptop needs charging sometimes. And what about the manufacture of those batteries?

I think the real ethical and moral issues are that people-including employers who are not PWP (people with Parkinson’s) treat PWPs fairly. That they not make fun or them because they have tremors and walk oddly. They need to remember that inside those distressed bodies are the minds and souls of individuals who might just as easily be them.

I think that people who have a disease should not be labeled as the disease nor should they be fired because they have the disease. I believe that employers need to recognize loyal employees and work with them to accommodate the employee within reasonable job descriptions.discriminationattorney.com/lawyer-attorney-1288974.html

I think there has been a moral and ethical issue with the Dept of Veterans Affairs who didn’t acknowledge for decades the damage done to the bodies of their soldiers, their own constituency, by agent orange. That they denied people disability compensation to these people who were exposed to this dioxin and also malathion when the two were combined (known triggers for PD by the way) is immoral and a national disgrace. That there is a huge list of horrible conditions which were sometimes treated sometimes ignored by VA is something that will be corrected in the next few years…easier to do since so many have died of these conditions now. Va set up care centers within this century – not the last one when these conditions were caused.parkinsons.va.gov/Consortium/index.asp

I say hats off to the State of Indiana which was the first state to recognize in a vote just last week that emergency responders could be exposed to materials which are known to trigger Parkinson’s disease. by that vote for HB 376 Indiana recognized the right to disability compensation for Firefighters, EMS workers and Police officers who might be exposed in the line of duty. now that was an ethical decision which brings a smile to the collective face of PD.parkinsonsfocustoday.blogspot.com/2009/05/parkinsons-disease-as-line-of-duty.html

I also feel that there is a moral and ethical responsibility on the part of the medical profession to acquire all the knowledge possible about diseases and begin early treatment. With PD, the patient must be started on a course of treatment immediately to prevent further neurodegeneration. While the diagnosis is not easy, listening and thinking are the best tools at this point. new diagnostics including blood tests are in the pipeline.

I also think that there is a responsibility of the patient to be knowledgeable and proactive in his/her care so that they can insist upon a courses of therapy and medication which will stay the progression of the disease.

Addendum:I am wondering if there aren’t ethical issues with some exposures. for example the exposure of Vietnam Vets to Agent Orange and Malathion: did the manufactures know? when did the military really know about the health risk of exposure? I am not talking about the aftercare and the identification of a disability but the moral and ethical issues involved in knowing that there is a serious potential physical-health danger to soldiers (and innocent civilians) and still proceding with the application. where does the line need to be drawn and when?

Emergency responders may have no choice about exposure but there needs to be recognition of the risks and fire Departments, EMS and Police departments have a moral and ethical responsibility to ensure that all personnel have the proper protection (breathing masks – respirators) and the continued time frame mandate for their use.

There is a moral responsibility of an employer to protect the safety of an employee. And that holds true for disease risks as well.

MARCH 3, 2011

Neurons have been derived from the skin of a woman with a genetic form of Parkinson’s disease and have been shown to replicate some key features of the condition in a dish, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The scientists hope to use the neurons to learn more about the disorder and to test possible treatments. such a tool is critical because there are no good animal models for Parkinson’s disease. it also validates the use of induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, to model various diseases.

“now that we can see that these neurons exhibit some of the earliest signs of the disorder, we can begin to develop methods to screen for factors that might protect them,” said Renee Reijo Pera, PhD, director of Stanford’s Center for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Education and co-senior author of the research, which appears in the March issue of Cell Stem Cell.

“this work has the potential to remove a major bottleneck in Parkinson’s disease research by allowing scientists to directly screen living human neurons with features of the disease,” said William Langston, MD, who founded the Parkinson’s Institute and Clinical Center in Sunnyvale, Calif., which was involved in the study. “Advances such as these highlight the importance of patients participating in medical research.”

The iPS cells are created by transforming skin or other specialized cells to look and act like embryonic stem cells. Many scientists and policy-makers have hoped that these cells, which can be created without the use of human embryos, could stand in for their more ethically fraught counterparts.

Recent research from Stanford and elsewhere, however, has begun to identify significant differences between the two classes of stem cells that call into question the ability of iPS cells to completely replace embryonic stem cells. Instead many researchers feel that the true strength of iPS cells may lie in their ability to create disease-specific cell lines for study from patients with a variety of disorders — something that would be difficult to do with embryonic stem cells.

Associate professor of neurosurgery Theo Palmer, PhD, is the other senior author of this new paper; the research was conducted in the labs of both Palmer and Reijo Pera, who is also a professor of obstetrics & gynecology. Ha Nam Nguyen, a former research associate now at Johns Hopkins, along with graduate students Blake Byers and Branden Cord are joint first authors of the work.

“this is the first time that neurons from a Parkinson’s disease patient have exhibited disease qualities in a petri dish,” said Palmer. “And it provides hints of what to look for in patients who have different genetic mutations or where a cause has not been identified. By comparing neurons from patients with different forms of Parkinson’s disease, we may find commonalities or differences that will help to optimize future treatments for each patient.”

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that causes the gradual loss of a certain type of neuron in the central nervous system. As the neurons are lost, the patient begins to experience the tremors, movement difficulties and rigidity that are the hallmarks of the condition. it affects about 1 percent of people over the age of 65, and about 5 percent of those over age 85. Currently there is no way to halt the progress of the disease. Most cases of Parkinson’s occur sporadically, but some (between 0.5 percent to about 8 percent) are caused by a genetic mutation.

Researchers at the Parkinson’s Institute collected skin cells from a 60-year-old woman with a genetic form of Parkinson’s. The members of the study team reasoned that they would have better chance of replicating the signs of the disorder with her cells rather than the cells of someone with the sporadic form.

Byers coaxed the iPS cells from the patient to develop into the type of neurons that die off in Parkinson’s disease. at first, the neurons looked and acted normally: They were able to generate electrical signals, they produced and secreted a messaging molecule called dopamine, and their gene expression profiles over time mimicked those of neurons created from “normal” iPS cells.

However, after about 30 to 60 days of culture, the neurons from the Parkinson’s patient began to exhibit some unusual characteristics. They expressed higher levels of genes for proteins needed to deal with oxidative stress — a condition in which destructive molecules wreak havoc on DNA and proteins within a cell — and churned out elevated levels of a protein involved in abnormal clumps of protein called Lewy bodies that are found in the neurons of people with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disorders. Oxidative stress has been previously associated with Parkinson’s disease.

The researchers concluded that the neurons from the Parkinson’s patient replicate many of the common features of the disorder, but in a much shorter timeframe.

“Parkinson’s disease takes decades to manifest itself in patients, so we were concerned about how rapidly these cells would change in culture,” said Byers. “However, the culture dish is a pretty stressful place. that environment, combined with the addition of selectively toxic chemical agents, probably accelerates the visible signs of the disorder. It’s also likely that there are innate mechanisms within the body that protect against these changes and cause a more protracted disease course.”

The researchers are now planning to begin testing various compounds to see if they can protect the neurons. They are also investigating whether they can see similar signs of disease in iPS-cell-derived neurons from patients with the non-genetic form of the disorder.

“Under the leadership of molecular geneticist Birgitt Schuele, MD, Parkinson’s Institute investigators are currently developing a large library of cell lines from patients with both forms of Parkinsonism to be used as tools for drug discovery and the study of disease mechanisms,” said Langston.

Additional Stanford scientists involved in the research include postdoctoral scholars Aleksandr Shcheglovitov, PhD, and Kehkooi Kee, PhD; former postdoctoral scholar James Byrne, PhD; research assistant Prachi Gujar; and associate professor of neurobiology Ricardo Dolmetsch, PhD.

The research was supported by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the Blume Foundation, the Kinetics Foundation, the Parkinson’s Alliance, the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and an anonymous donor, as well as Stanford’s Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Neurosurgery and Bioengineering.

Stanford University Medical Center integrates research, medical education and patient care at its three institutions – Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. for more information, please visit the Office of Communication & Public Affairs site at mednews.stanford.edu/.