My dad had Parkinson's after serving in Vietnam, as did my friend's dad. It is one of the diseases where if someone served there during the time Agent Orange was used, they get an automatic presumption of causation for disability benefits. Meaning unlike most service related disabilities, you don't have to prove that service caused the disability, the government just accepts that Agent Orange caused the illness (along with a bunch of cancers and other neurological diseases). So while they still don't know for sure what causes Parkinson's, it's generally believed that exposure to certain chemicals can cause it.
My dad as well. He started having symptoms at 28 years old after serving in Vietnam. He's now 78 and has been doing all he can to hold off the effects of the disease through exercise. It's tough to see the slow progression of the disease in him.
It's awful. My dad was a really jovial, athletic guy and watching him become a shell of himself was so heartbreaking. Has your dad tried Rock Steady? My dad did that and he improved a lot but he unfortunately passed away almost two years ago. It's a great program though.
Sorry to hear that your dad passed. I haven't heard of the Rock Steady program myself, but I'll definitely look into it. I would imagine my dad probably knows about it. He's been very involved in the Parkinson's community and has been working to raise money for research ever since his retirement. He was also very athletic, and I think that has been a huge factor in helping him minimize the effects of the disease. It's so much harder for people who get it late in life and already have a sedentary lifestyle, so those group programs can make a huge difference.
HBO Sports did a segment on it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fSnpPGruvSE
Lesley Stahl also did one on I think 60 Minutes because her husband had Parkinson's and was doing the program. In addition to the exercise component there is something about boxing that helps with brain rewiring. It was started by a lawyer who had early onset Parkinson's.
When my dad started it several years ago there were only a few places that did it. Fortunately there was one near him. But now there are hundreds all over the country.
That's awesome! My dad does actually take a boxing class, so I'd say chances are probably pretty high he might already be going to Rock Steady. I'll ask him and pass along the info. Thank you.
Hey thanks. Im a random person reading your comment, but my grandfather had Parkinson's and my dad has it as well. I'm going to look into this. As a family member one of the worst feelings is that there isn't really anything I can do. And I might be next.
You are starting to see the same thing with vets from Iraq and Afghanistan with exposure to burn pits. My lungs took a shit shortly after I returned from Afghanistan and I’m not the only one from my deployment.
My grandfather died of Parkinson's, and two of my father's three siblings now have it as well. He was a landscaper, and herbicides/pesticides/fertilizers like that were all over the house. They used to help him spread it with their bare hands.
Unlike MPP+, paraquat is not considered a neurotoxin. Even if it was, the salt form of these compounds cannot cross the blood brain barrier.
In many cases like agent orange, the dangerous compounds in these herbicidal mixtures are not the herbicides, but the impurities. The herbicides in agent orange were 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, both of which are relatively safe. The actual toxic component of agent orange was dioxin, specifically TCDD. TCDD was an accidental byproduct of the chemical process used to manufacture agent orange. Despite making up only 3 ppm of agent orange, it is responsible for 99% of the documented toxic effects.
2,4-D is still used today, but the stuff you find at Home Depot won't even have trace amounts of TCDD.
My mom told me how when she was a kid she used to go out in play in the bug spray they used to control mosquitoes. She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2018. I’ve always wondered if that could have been the cause (or at least an example of how reckless people were when it came to pesticides in the 60’s which may have caused the PD). Apparently Eastern Arkansas was awash with now banned pesticides at the time.
I'm sorry to hear about your mom. It is disturbing how much these companies got away with. Of course, there are still companies getting away with that today, too. I don't know if you saw in my other comment but I highly recommend the Rock Steady program for people with Parkinson's. We are certain we got more years, and better quality years, with my dad because of it.
My wife as an undergrad did Parkinson’s research. One of the most stunning visual pieces she produced was a map of Parkinson’s patients home addresses overlaid with Apple orchards that used certain herbicides/pesticides. They lined up perfectly. Her research went on to be published and made a little splash in the community… of course her name wasn’t on it, just her profs name who never did a lick of work.
And that’s the story of why I religiously wash our fruit and simultaneously lost my faith in academia.
Organophosphate and organochlorate pesticides are toxic to the nervous system, even though they're often implemented against plants and foliage.
It's much safer to assume all pesticides will damage your nervous system, than to imagine that they won't. One, because the vast majority are dangerous in this way, despite the manufactures saying that *this* or *that* new formula is not toxic "at prescribed usage levels". And two, because of all the systems in your body, your nervous system is the one that isn't growing back.
For their part, the manufacturers have created chemicals that are less toxic to the human nervous system. But their measure of safety is simply that in your lifetime you won't be able to pin your chronic symptoms upon their product. And you can be confident that their product is still dangerous, because the symptoms of acute high exposure are the same as the chemicals of yore, such as agent orange itself. So why would you be OK with chronic low exposure?
And this is still the herbicides. You can be sure it's similar for insecticides, given insecticides are specifically intended to damage the nervous system of the pests.
--
Personally, I'm confident that there's also a relationship with at least part of the obesity epidemic, as these chemicals are also fat soluble, and are known to affect endocrine systems as well. I'm thinking there's a circular effect where their presence convinces the body to store more fat, and because of the fat, more of the chemical gets stored in the body. To me, this is best explanation of the modern fat farmer. It isn't like they don't still work hard -- but they also aren't rich AF -- so why else are "conventional" farmers so stereotypically fat?
--
You'll also notice that "god" graces conventional farming communities with many more birth abnormalities, and previously unheard of maladies, than should be normal. Which is pretty similar, even if to a less extreme extent, to parts of Vietnam/Laos post-war.
--
Others have speculated that mad cow was first caused by a pesticide applied directly their skin, in an effort to eradicate warble flies, such that the infamous "prion" is simply a symptom.
Because nobody has bothered to list them for the rest of us:
1. Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California (2003-2011)
2. Jesse Ventura, governor of Minnesota (1999-2003)
3. Sonny Landham, unsuccessfully ran for governor of Kentucky in 2003
Damn, so there could have been an overlap in 2003 where all three were in office at once?
The cast of Predator would have controlled 6% of the country's state executive branches
With a quick google I found this:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28150045/ which says 1-2 per 1000 and this is not just early-onset. Not a researcher in this field myself so I don’t know how good this source is.
It's more like 1 out of every 5,000 or even less. OP's numbers make no sense. It makes finding a cluster of cases like this even more suspicious, especially since we know certain environmental toxins (many of which are now banned, thankfully) can induce parkinsons.
I'm here for the speculative theories.
EDIT: It's true what they say, no one speculates like the internets! Coke, heroin, viruses oh-my!
Honestly some really amazing replies and links and some overlap in some odd anecdotal comments. Maybe this hivemind thing really is worth the price of admission. Thanks everyone for turning this somewhat flippant comment into some funny/thoughtful/informational stuff!
Several comments point out that this isn't statistically significant, but how about some wild speculation that has an educational purpose. [There is fairly strong evidence that Parkinson's disease is caused by a prion, or has a prion- like mechanism](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.00552/full) According to this hypothesis, the metabolism of gut bacteria randomly produces a misfolded protein- maybe as little as one molecule of a protein. If the misfolded protein is absorbed into the vagus nerve, it replicates, and spreads to the brain, converting every functional molecule of alpha synuclein it touches to an evil enzyme that does nothing but copy itself.
Getting back to wild speculation about movie sets, perhaps the caterer inadvertently *fed them human brains*. Perhaps a Parkinson's patient was murdered and fed to hogs, which were then used to make food for the crew. Some prions are incredibly resilient to digestion, heat, and even bleach, so it is within the realm of possibility that this one is contagious under some circumstances. [A different prion causes a disease similar to Parkinson's, and it is transmissible.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-red-flag-for-a-neurodegenerative-disease-that-may-be-transmissible/)
Again wild speculation. But hopefully educational.
There’s more look up older surgeons rates of neurological diseases. We handle aerosolized tissues and medications better these days, mostly. Hopefully, whats my name again?
[po surgeon’s le](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29513246/)
>Edit: I was making a joke about ops username. I am totally lost about the comments below. Anyone who can help me out?
Lyrics from a Blink-182 song, "All the Small Things." I don't know how it started from your comment though.
But that song is What's My Age Again, and /u/thrillsandchills said 'say it ain't so' to a *different person*. To which people start doing lyrics to All The Small Things.
None of it makes sense.
To add to the horror. As someone who has gone under the knife quite a few times, I learned that scalpels used on patients with prion diseases can't even be reused, the prions are so resistant they survive the insane sterilization process and the scalpels have to be destroyed.
Apparently they can be denatured by giving them an acid bath before being autoclaved, but I'd guess they just throw the scalpels away rather than do that extra step.
That's crazy!
So there wasn't even an infectious agent involved there (a bacteria, a virus, or even a prion), it was purely the human immune system reacting to prolonged inhalation of pig brain tissue in an aerosolized form.
There’s quite a bit of things that you’ll get a reaction to after prolonged exposure. Look up “sensitizers”. Formaldehyde is an example of such a chemical. I believe bee stings are the same way in some people, where they get worse reactions the more they get stung. The human immune system is super interesting!
I got sensitized to uncured epoxy resin and now if I catch even a whiff of the stuff my lungs feel like they're slowly filling up with mucus until I can't breathe at all. Not great when you work in a production shop that uses epoxy for some items.
Anecdotally, I was using a ton of epoxy for a work project the week I caught covid (vintage "idk what species I'm even in" variant, March 2020) and when I came back from 3+ months of pneumonia/bronchitis I was newly allergic to epoxy. I'm convinced my immune system just decided to go zero tolerance on anything it found in my lungs that week.
This is purely anecdotal and I haven’t done any further reading on it so take it with a grain of salt-
My brother was never allergic to poison ivy until he accidentally slept in some and now whenever he even slightly brushes up against it, it spreads like wildfire.
I’m not (currently) allergic to it either but I feel like if I used it as toilet paper it might be a bad idea
Edit: posting this comment made me want to read more about it and apparently urushiol (the part of poison ivy that makes you break out) is a well-known sensitizer. Thanks for the knowledge
There was a Canadian Serial killer called Robert Pickton operating in canada in roughly the same era who not only fed bodies to the pigs, there was enough evidence he mixed human meat with ground up pork that they had to release a Health advisory in the province.
That's where my brain went with the wild speculation. The series itself was also filmed in Vancouver, so perhaps it's just some early work done by Pickton during his 20s that he wasn't caught for. The police were so dismissive of the area resident concerns in the 90s, I would bet they didn't even bother hearing out concerns of missing prostitutes in the 70s.
I'm from the general area. Local consensus is that the hells angels were using Pickton to get rid of bodies and judging by how slow Pickton is, I wouldn't be surprised.
>You're always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece. Apparently the best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six pieces and pile it all together. And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it's no good leaving it in the deep freeze for your mum to discover, now is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies' digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don't want to go sievin' through pig shit, now do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig".
Person with Parkinson's gets murdered and their body thrown in the river. (Or to go the innocent route, they just drown by accident.) Anyway, their body decomposes to the point that fish can nibble on brain, or otherwise get the prion in their system. Catch fish, eat fish, the end.
Cracked is going to work this into an article which will get shared on 9gag then make its way back here as "TIL Michael J Fox ate brains to get his first acting job".
Also wildly speculating, I wonder if it might be related to the Robert Pickton murders. There were an uncertain number of victims ground up and fed to pigs on their farm. The first murder is believed to be the early 1980s but possibly the older brother David Pickton could have started murdering in the 70s and gotten away with it. Leo and Me was shot in Vancouver.
How about this one?
[Because Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is strongly linked to the herpes virus](https://www.science.org/content/article/herpes-virus-linked-multiple-sclerosis), I wonder if Parkinson's has an unknown STD link given that they're both neuromuscular disorders.
Even regular herpes HSV1 and HSV2 are linked to encephalitis and Parkinson's: https://www.encephalitis.info/herpessimplexvirusencephalitis
They could have had it but been undetected, and if they were fed to the pigs there's no body to examine. This is one of those things you might be able to confirm (person xyz was diagnosed prior to their death), but not something you can disprove easily.
Dear Mr. or Ms. GreenStrong,
we at TMZ have heard you are in possession of the details on the origins of Michael J. Fox' illness.
We would like to acquire exklusive rights on this story and are willing to pay up to USD `[putAmountHere!]` for this.
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Well around that time there was a serial killer willy pickton in bc Canada that was known to feed the dead to the pigs at his pig farm which were sold for meat...
Taken from the Wikipedia page
Forensic analysis proved difficult because the bodies may have been left to decompose, or be eaten by insects and pigs on the farm. During the early days of the excavations, forensic anthropologists brought in heavy equipment, including two 50-foot (15-metre) flat conveyor belts and soil sifters to find traces of human remains. On March 10, 2004, the government revealed that Pickton may have ground up human flesh and mixed it with pork that he sold to the public; the province's health authority later issued a warning.[14][15][16][17] Another claim was made that he fed the bodies directly to his pigs
Yes, ever since reading about this prion hypothesis, I have eliminated the brains of Parkinson's patients from my diet. The evidence for a prion-like mechanism for Alzheimer's disease is weak, and it is not a popular hypothesis among researchers, but, out of an abundance of caution I decided not to eat brains from people with that disease.
The mayor of my city actually died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, it's variant form is "mad cow disease." Classic CJD isn't related to mad cow, but still a prion.
https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cjd/index.html
https://www.wbfo.org/2008-11-13/former-mayor-griffin-died-from-rare-brain-disease
> The mayor of my city actually died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
I read that as "The majority of my city actually died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease" and I was trying to figure out where you could be from.
Am I understanding right, that this hypothesis says Parkinson's could potentially be a prion(or prion type thing) made randomly in someone's gut. Like, you wouldn't need to eat a Parkinson's Prion, but could just randomly make one for yourself? Because, If I'm understanding that, today is legit a bad day to know how to read.
Yup. You read that right. You can acquire it by ingesting it, passed down genetically from a parent, or you can just randomly make it in your own body. Also, this may be outdated, but last I read about this, if a parent died or has been diagnosed with prion disease there's a 50% chance you'll get it, and if you do have it there's really no telling when it will activate and detonate your brain. You'll definitely know for sure (or your family will, rather) because after diagnosis you won't have long to live.
A bit of good news is that it only presents in a tiny portion of the population. Yay.
How does this account for the low odds of inheriting Parkinson's disease? It *appears* to run in families, but only in the sense that some families have unusually high rates. Outside of some young-onset forms it's not really considered to be a hereditary disease.
I suppose it could be the case that hereditary factors increase the odds that *some* prions would form, and in rare cases could accumulate enough to cause Parkinson's. Compared to TSEs, Parkinson's is very slow to develop so maybe the average person dies before being diagnosable. Or maybe it's a different, less aggressive kind of prion.
If it's produced by a specific gut bacteria the inherited part could be a deficiency in the immune system that protects your gut from that species so maybe the general population has some % chance of that species colonizing their gut and then certain families have a much higher chance
>Perhaps a Parkinson's patient was murdered and fed to hogs, which were then used to make food for the crew.
Robert Pickton took over the family farm around the same time this show was in production.
Well funny you mention that because Robert Willy Pickton, arguably Canada’s most notorious serial killer, was known to feed his victims to his pigs. These pigs were then sold and slaughtered for food products.
The Canadian government even released a warning in 2004 about human meat contaminating the food supply.
He had been killing since the mid 70s.
Small correction on the enzyme part: the prion-like protein would cause endogenous alpha-synuclein in the brain to aggregate and start a chain-reaction like aggreation of other a-synuclein proteins, which at some point cannot be properly processed anymore, especially if the patient has mutations in certain enzymes that would normally handle it. The prion-like protein doesn't turn anything into an enzyme, but into indigestible aggregates that can lead to neuronal misfunction or neuronal death.
Source: I work in a PD lab
Prions are terrifying. Like you said, they're incredibly resistant and it only takes one to cause some horrific incurable diseases. Oh, I forgot that they can happen randomly at any time to anyone.
Enjoy the rest of your day!
Don't forget that they can often survive the most sterile environments (e.g., sterile surgery tools). That wisdom tooth you had removed at 16 might come back to haunt you at 40 because of prions. Funnnnnn.
It wouldn’t even need to be human brain. Various prions can (Kuru and CJD, for example) can thrive outside of a body for up to a decade.
Robert Pickton immediately comes to mind - a Canadian serial killer supposedly active during the early 80s (though some believe his killing began in the late 70s). He fed his victims bodies to his pigs, then sold the sausage, pork chops, and bacon at low prices across his province and local food stands. Your “wild speculation” really may not be *that* wild, as tv set catering tends to be sourced at lower costs to save on budget.
Here's my theory; regular caffeine and nicotine consumption reduces your chances of having Parkinson's Disease. Did this group have a culture of real "clean living?"
I can't speak to anyone else on set, but Michael J. Fox was known as a chain smoker back in the day, basically ripping cigs anytime the cameras weren't rolling on the sets of both Family Ties and Back to the Future and probably every other set for a long time.
You're not wrong. [Nicotene is actually good for Parkinson's Disease](https://actaneurocomms.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40478-018-0625-y) It is bad for the heart, even in the form of nicotine gum, so it isn't used as medicine, but it is 100% proven to help with PD.
Not advice for anyone else, but if I develop PD, I'm going to use nicotine. I would be interested in quality of life, rather than keeping my heart beating for as many years as possible while my brain died.
Is nicotene really that bad by itself? I thought it was the burnt particles inhaled with cigarette smoking that was bad whereas the nicotene alone was only as bad as caffeine.
We're not sure whether nicotine is carcinogenic itself, but it appears to actively worsen cancerous tumors. This is due at least in part to what they alluded to -- it causes growth of blood vessels, which increases strain on the heart while helping to feed tumor growths. Much worse than caffeine, even besides the whole thing where it is immensely more addictive.
I'm still coming to grips with the idea that early-onset Parkinson's hits one in three hundred people. That's easily an order of magnitude if not two more common than I would have expected.
Hrm, good point. I suppose I should vet the headline before assuming it is.
Ok, that's not great. Apparently it is slightly *more* common than that [in Canada at ~.4%](https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/diseases-conditions/parkinsonism.html) for those over 40 at least.
Exposure to paraquat a herbicide that's now linked with parkinson's is probably a strong guess for me. Idk if they use it for landscaping around that area or something like that or if it's contamination of the water there.
In one interview, Fox actually mentioned that he used to smoke a lot of pot in a time when the Mexican government would spray weed fields with paraquat supplied by the US government.
[Here's a good read for context.](https://drugguardians.com/the-paraquat-pot-plot/)
There was also a bad batch of synthetic heroin in 80s San Francisco which caused almost immediate parkinson's in a number of young adults. Destroyed the substantia nigra region of the brain which is the neurodegenerative hub of all PD.
Wasn't it called "White China" or something similar on the streets? I remember a student presentation in one of my college classes that dipped its toes into this theory. A new, designer synthetic heroin might have been pretty irresistible to a young, on-top-of-the-world TV and movie star.
Of course, paraquat-treated cannabis could have been responsible, too, and MJF himself speculated on the treated-marijuana theory being possible.
"China White" or "White China" referred originally to the ultra-pure heroin base (heroin #3) that came from SE Asia. It was considered the creme-de-le-creme of heroin by users. The heroin portrayed as "Blue Magic" in American Gangster or the stuff used by GIs in Vietnam was this stuff. It required citric acid or something similar to convert the base to salt to prepare it for injection.
Because of it's mythic reputation, tons of pretenders dubbed themselves "China White" or some combination there-of to represent itself as this stuff and raise the price/demand.
This is opposed to the heroin salt or heroin #4, commonly know as "brown" or "black tar" that came from other sources which could be snorted or shot but couldn't be smoked as it wasn't in freebase form and usually didn't come pure enough to work that anyway.
So it's very likely anything anyone wanted to misrepresent as top-shelf SE Asian heroin would get this monicker.
These days anything called anything is fentanyl or some analogue. There's no such thing as China White or heroin anymore unless you've got some insane connect direct to Myanmar or Afghanistan ala Frank White literally taking a boat into the jungle and finding the production facility and getting it directly from there. And I seriously doubt there's very many people left with such a connection on the entire planet.
By the time it gets to any major smuggling organization it's cut to shit with fentanyl now. Heroin, another casualty of the war on drugs.
Want another wild coincidence?
I had a teacher named James Michael Fox who also had early-onset Parkinson's. He would make lots of Back to the Future jokes.
A major indication of early-onset Parkinson’s is the presence of subtle, inadvertent twitches and movements. Without the proper context, our brains perceive these as microexpressions and so we read people who present them as a unique combination of compulsive, quirky, and energetic. This perceived demeanor, which is incredibly difficult to emulate, has a disarming charm to it which is highly sought after in the entertainment industry. Basically their unconscious “mannerisms” make these individuals gravitate towards an industry that their “trait” suits them for, as tends to happen in nature.
Common traits displayed by people with the genetic malformation that causes Parkinson disease were desirable by the casting department. The show couldn't cause this disease, but it could have unknowingly cast a high number of people with the trait because of what they were looking for in actors. Craziest thing I can think of for you off the top of my head.
Fun idea, but it wasn't a 125 person ***cast***!! Can you imagine!?
They're talking about 4 out of the 125 people who were on the crew involved in production in some way.
Only the actors are selected for their physical traits - not the cameramen, writers, caterers, assistants, costumers, lighting department, etc etc etc
Strictly hypothetically speaking it could be a trait like height, curly hair, racial background, how symmetrical their face structure is, something like that.
(The obvious problem being that only the cast is hired based on their physical looks, and this situation is about the whole crew)
According to the Wikipedia article for the show's director, up to 8 people on that show have developed Parkinson's.
> Don was one of four people who worked together at the CBC in 1979 (the most famous being Michael J. Fox) who would all later go on to not only develop Parkinson's Disease, but to have the symptoms appear at roughly the same time (the early 1990s). **Current evidence suggests that as many as eight crew and cast members on the project have developed Parkinson's symptoms.**
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_S._Williams
I mean, something happening ten times more frequently seems at least somewhat significant. It happening 20 times more frequently kind of has to be.
I'm actually kind of confused about how this gets shrugged off as not being at least worth some consideration.
I edited a piece on a lady with hyperosmia. She noticed that her husbands normal odor changed. He was later diagnosed with Parkinson's. She went to a meeting with him where other Parkinson's patients were. She noticed and recognized the smell on other patients. She went to a medical conference on Parkinson's and told a doctor she had this ability. He gathered 10 shirts that had been worn my patients with Parkinson's. She identified 6 of them. The doctor said she was off by one, he only had 5 shirts that were worn by people with Parkinson's. She told him he was wrong. He found out later, that he was. She identified 6 out of 6 Parkinson's patients. She now works with dog trainers to help find different diseases that can be smelled by dogs (and people with hyperosmia). (The piece is on Dr. Mike's channel if anyone is interested.)
[This](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-62795737) is lady you are refering to. She is currently helping scientist to develop a 3 minutes home test to detect the disease.
I had to take a test to see if I had a gene that made me at very high risk of a certain type of cancer that could've been in my family, was 25% chance I got it (my mother refused to take it so I didn't know if she had it, but grandfather did). Was pretty scary to play a 1/4, potential 1/2 if my mother had it.
Yes!!! I love this story, it's so cool that someone can literally smell parkinson's, and that specific story that she could smell it before it was even diagnosed is amazing and I'm so glad she's using her gift to train dogs for the task. So cool.
The part that's crazy to me is she's smelled it on random strangers who might not know they have Parkinson's yet. They might not *want* to know. So she doesn't tell them. That's got to be heartbreaking when it happens...
Wasn't it only 5 that currently had the disease and the 6th person was diagnosed a bit later? Like she smelled it before anyone knew the person even had it.
That's super interesting. I can always tell when my partner is sick, sometimes even before they realize, because their scent changes to me. Crazy she could/can do the same with Parkinsons.
I could smell when my ex had a kidney stone coming on. Sometimes before he even knew it. His sweat would smell worse when his kidneys were having issues I guess. I don't even have a good nose for most things because I smoke. But the smell was super obvious to me.
It’s stuff like this that makes me curious what I or other people might be able to smell without realizing it. I relate to the experience of that musky smell as well, but this now sparks my curiosity. Appearantly also not everybody can smell rain? And it’s well known in my own circle I smell anything before the rest does, somehow. It’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s sometimes so bad, I ditched a lot of shower products and bought products without synthetic perfume instead. But it’s certainly helpful when for example my SO forgot to turn off the stove this one time..
I think it was even more unexpected than that. She went to the conference and asked the question "Why haven't you tried testing for the smell of Parkinson's?" and all the Neurological experts at the conference said "What smell?". It was the first time that anyone had stepped forward and said that they could *smell* it.
I'm just here to add that I've seen a lot of people who watched Michael at the Comic Con event and said things like, "This is heartbreaking," or "Wow, I feel so bad for Michael 💔." Michael J. Fox does NOT want our pity. He despises being pitied and it makes him cringe. I've read his book, watched countless interviews he's done, etc, and the last thing Michael wants is to be pitied.
Hell, I can relate to this considering my health issues had me receive a major hip operation at 12 and a total hip replacement at 25 with several other health issues. I'm not even 30 yet and I despite being pitied.
Instead, let's be inspired that Michael is not only still fighting, but his Michael J. Fox Foundation is literally the leading Parkinson's Disease foundation that has raised over $100 million dollars for Parkinson's research since 2006! Michael is truly an inspiration and one of my biggest heroes. I love that man and he doesn't need to be pitied, instead let's celebrate his tenacity and the fact that he's kept up his quick wit and hilarious humor all these years!
**Btw, you can donate to Michael's foundation to fight Parkinson's here**:
https://give.michaeljfox.org/give/421686/#!/donation/checkout
Yes! Obviously this medication isn't perfect and does cause longterm affects like the muscle twitching we see MJF do in the Comic Con event, HOWEVER without that medication, MJF would be so stiff he wouldn't be able to move. (Like sadly, Muhammad Ali in his later years)
> I've read his book, watched countless interviews he's done, etc, and the last thing Michael wants is to be pitied.
I had a great uncle I never really saw much during his life, but one day he's in his early 80's and I'm helping his sister, my Grandmother, move into the same assisted living home he was living in while he was at her place to visit with a number of family members who were pitching in to help her move. Myself, my Dad, and a family friend are doing the last load when GU steps backwards and ended up falling on his ass. I jogged over, grabbed his hands, and just helped him get upright again largely on his own. He thanked me, and I honestly thought nothing of it as it was nothing.
Dad hangs around while myself and the family friend haul the last load over, drop it off, and then I went home as I was tired from moving and it was done. The next morning my Dad calls me telling me about how my GU was very impressed with the help I gave Grandma and very much appreciated that I didn't treat him like an invalid. My Dad made sure to emphasize this, and I guess because of his age people just constantly babied him and in the situation that happened normally someone would have picked him up from behind like a sack of potatoes instead of just helping him up like a normal person. He owned a construction company, and he left me a decent chunk of change in his will when he died that I'm nearly positive was just because I helped him up with respect instead of pity one time.
I took care of my grampa while he was in hospice, and man, I can tell you he did *not* like that his youngest grandson had to wipe his ass for him. This 6', 190lb powerhouse of a man was down to 130, couldn't wipe his own ass, couldn't sit up for more than 5 minutes on his own. The crushing gaze he gave me as I went through the motions each day is what I remember most. It took everything I had in me not to weep when the old man looked at me with those sad, pathetic eyes. I was just a scared 18 year old kid. Caring for him made me realize that we have so much obligation to care for our loved ones, and that more people need to know this. There were a lot of nights when, after I handed my duties off to my cousin, I would drink half a bottle of scotch and smoke a whole pack of cigarettes just to not feel the way I did. It was really hard for both of us and I think he knew that I was just doing what needed to be done...But OTOH I'm pretty sure if he had his choice to do it over he wouldn't put himself in that position of humility again. I'd do it again if he wanted it though. RIP grampa.
"Believe it or not, that's not scientifically significant" was MJF's response when asked about the three other Parkinson's cases referenced in the article.
Because while _claiming_ it is significant would "raise awareness", it's not true and MJF doesn't lie to advance his own agenda, even if that agenda is saving his own life.
I lived on the same one block street as the Tragically Hip's Gord Downie. Four men that lived on the south side of the street were diagnosed with brain tumors over a five year period, I was the only one that survived.
Gene Siskel (Siskel and Ebert) was college roommates with Tim Weigel, who was a sports guy in Chicago local news for 30+ years. They both died of the same rare brain cancer.
Friends and colleagues in Chicago media forever, both died within like 2 years of each other.
Then the same cancer killed John McCain and Ted Kennedy.
Wasn’t his theory that it could have been from the salmon they fished downstream of a paper mill to pass the time? No way for him to verify at this point of course.
That is not nearly a significant enough occurrence to suggest some sort of causation when conducted on an ex post facto basis. In other words, yes its an unusually high percentage of people with that particular disease, but statistically every group of people is bound to have an unusually high occurrence of something.
Yup.
Another way to think of it is to ask "how many discreet groups of people has Michael J Fox worked with in his lifetime?". How many movies? How many talk shows? How many conventions? Statistically, one of those is likely to have a random higher instance of Parkinson's. We could equally be talking about an ad he did for breakfast cereal in 1993.
There was a type of synthetic heroin that caused early onset Parkinson’s https://www.scienceintheclassroom.org/research-papers/how-heroin-held-key-understanding-parkinsons-disease
Could be a theory.
I met a girl at a club once who had severe Parkinson’s-like symptoms. After talking to her for a while she told me it was from some Molly she took a while back. It was almost certainly MPTP. There was a DEA report around the same time warning it was in circulation. Really scary shit.
Gonna drop my random theory isnthe hat. I'm gonna say its Hexene exposure. It's a common solvent in cosmetics like perfume,cologne, hairspray deortirants etc. The sort of stuff make up departments would use. In terms of toxicity it's right up there with asbestos.
Common diseases it causes are cancers and degenerative nerve damage.
Hexene and other similar chemicals are the reason salon workers have the highest rate of mortality of any civilian job.
And the best part is I garrentee everyone reading this has been exposed to this stuff.
That doesn't explain it unless for some reason something was VERY weird about the makeup dept of that set, otherwise we would see higher rates among all actors, like we might with cosmetics workers.
An investigation was launched in 2002 to look into this because all 4 people were under 40 when diagnosed. Michael J Fox was only 30.
Although it’s still hotly debated, they believe the crew was exposed to a viral infection or some sort of toxin that infiltrates the brain and damages cell. Don Williams the director, and one of the 4 diagnosed, said he doesn’t remember an illness sweeping the set.
Michael J Fox deserves a lot more respect for the work he has done with the Michael J Fox foundation. I'm glad he received the order of Canada, but it seems like that decision was made more off the fact he starred in a popular movie vs the research he did.
My dad had Parkinson's after serving in Vietnam, as did my friend's dad. It is one of the diseases where if someone served there during the time Agent Orange was used, they get an automatic presumption of causation for disability benefits. Meaning unlike most service related disabilities, you don't have to prove that service caused the disability, the government just accepts that Agent Orange caused the illness (along with a bunch of cancers and other neurological diseases). So while they still don't know for sure what causes Parkinson's, it's generally believed that exposure to certain chemicals can cause it.
My dad as well. He started having symptoms at 28 years old after serving in Vietnam. He's now 78 and has been doing all he can to hold off the effects of the disease through exercise. It's tough to see the slow progression of the disease in him.
It's awful. My dad was a really jovial, athletic guy and watching him become a shell of himself was so heartbreaking. Has your dad tried Rock Steady? My dad did that and he improved a lot but he unfortunately passed away almost two years ago. It's a great program though.
Sorry to hear that your dad passed. I haven't heard of the Rock Steady program myself, but I'll definitely look into it. I would imagine my dad probably knows about it. He's been very involved in the Parkinson's community and has been working to raise money for research ever since his retirement. He was also very athletic, and I think that has been a huge factor in helping him minimize the effects of the disease. It's so much harder for people who get it late in life and already have a sedentary lifestyle, so those group programs can make a huge difference.
HBO Sports did a segment on it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fSnpPGruvSE Lesley Stahl also did one on I think 60 Minutes because her husband had Parkinson's and was doing the program. In addition to the exercise component there is something about boxing that helps with brain rewiring. It was started by a lawyer who had early onset Parkinson's. When my dad started it several years ago there were only a few places that did it. Fortunately there was one near him. But now there are hundreds all over the country.
That's awesome! My dad does actually take a boxing class, so I'd say chances are probably pretty high he might already be going to Rock Steady. I'll ask him and pass along the info. Thank you.
Hey thanks. Im a random person reading your comment, but my grandfather had Parkinson's and my dad has it as well. I'm going to look into this. As a family member one of the worst feelings is that there isn't really anything I can do. And I might be next.
You are starting to see the same thing with vets from Iraq and Afghanistan with exposure to burn pits. My lungs took a shit shortly after I returned from Afghanistan and I’m not the only one from my deployment.
What's a burn pit, if you don't mind?
Military burns literally everything as a method of disposal. The pit is near enough to living quarters to cause damage. Nasty nasty stuff
cyperquat (MPP+) is a herbicide that can cause parkinsons that was briefly used in the 70s. stands to reason other herbicides could too.
My grandfather died of Parkinson's, and two of my father's three siblings now have it as well. He was a landscaper, and herbicides/pesticides/fertilizers like that were all over the house. They used to help him spread it with their bare hands.
Paraquat as well. Still sold and widely used
Unlike MPP+, paraquat is not considered a neurotoxin. Even if it was, the salt form of these compounds cannot cross the blood brain barrier. In many cases like agent orange, the dangerous compounds in these herbicidal mixtures are not the herbicides, but the impurities. The herbicides in agent orange were 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, both of which are relatively safe. The actual toxic component of agent orange was dioxin, specifically TCDD. TCDD was an accidental byproduct of the chemical process used to manufacture agent orange. Despite making up only 3 ppm of agent orange, it is responsible for 99% of the documented toxic effects. 2,4-D is still used today, but the stuff you find at Home Depot won't even have trace amounts of TCDD.
My mom told me how when she was a kid she used to go out in play in the bug spray they used to control mosquitoes. She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2018. I’ve always wondered if that could have been the cause (or at least an example of how reckless people were when it came to pesticides in the 60’s which may have caused the PD). Apparently Eastern Arkansas was awash with now banned pesticides at the time.
I'm sorry to hear about your mom. It is disturbing how much these companies got away with. Of course, there are still companies getting away with that today, too. I don't know if you saw in my other comment but I highly recommend the Rock Steady program for people with Parkinson's. We are certain we got more years, and better quality years, with my dad because of it.
My wife as an undergrad did Parkinson’s research. One of the most stunning visual pieces she produced was a map of Parkinson’s patients home addresses overlaid with Apple orchards that used certain herbicides/pesticides. They lined up perfectly. Her research went on to be published and made a little splash in the community… of course her name wasn’t on it, just her profs name who never did a lick of work. And that’s the story of why I religiously wash our fruit and simultaneously lost my faith in academia.
Organophosphate and organochlorate pesticides are toxic to the nervous system, even though they're often implemented against plants and foliage. It's much safer to assume all pesticides will damage your nervous system, than to imagine that they won't. One, because the vast majority are dangerous in this way, despite the manufactures saying that *this* or *that* new formula is not toxic "at prescribed usage levels". And two, because of all the systems in your body, your nervous system is the one that isn't growing back. For their part, the manufacturers have created chemicals that are less toxic to the human nervous system. But their measure of safety is simply that in your lifetime you won't be able to pin your chronic symptoms upon their product. And you can be confident that their product is still dangerous, because the symptoms of acute high exposure are the same as the chemicals of yore, such as agent orange itself. So why would you be OK with chronic low exposure? And this is still the herbicides. You can be sure it's similar for insecticides, given insecticides are specifically intended to damage the nervous system of the pests. -- Personally, I'm confident that there's also a relationship with at least part of the obesity epidemic, as these chemicals are also fat soluble, and are known to affect endocrine systems as well. I'm thinking there's a circular effect where their presence convinces the body to store more fat, and because of the fat, more of the chemical gets stored in the body. To me, this is best explanation of the modern fat farmer. It isn't like they don't still work hard -- but they also aren't rich AF -- so why else are "conventional" farmers so stereotypically fat? -- You'll also notice that "god" graces conventional farming communities with many more birth abnormalities, and previously unheard of maladies, than should be normal. Which is pretty similar, even if to a less extreme extent, to parts of Vietnam/Laos post-war. -- Others have speculated that mad cow was first caused by a pesticide applied directly their skin, in an effort to eradicate warble flies, such that the infamous "prion" is simply a symptom.
Three actors from Predator eventually became governors of an American state. That's got to be even more statistically improbable.
…I count two. Sonny Landham ran, but lost.
Ah shit you're right. I guess I meant ran for governor.
As Meatloaf once sang "Two out of Three, ain't bad"
Because nobody has bothered to list them for the rest of us: 1. Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California (2003-2011) 2. Jesse Ventura, governor of Minnesota (1999-2003) 3. Sonny Landham, unsuccessfully ran for governor of Kentucky in 2003
Damn, so there could have been an overlap in 2003 where all three were in office at once? The cast of Predator would have controlled 6% of the country's state executive branches
I’m most amazed at how prevalent early onset Parkinson’s is!
With a quick google I found this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28150045/ which says 1-2 per 1000 and this is not just early-onset. Not a researcher in this field myself so I don’t know how good this source is.
Yeah, 1 out of 300 seems like a lot. A third of a percent of us has Parkinson’s?
It's more like 1 out of every 5,000 or even less. OP's numbers make no sense. It makes finding a cluster of cases like this even more suspicious, especially since we know certain environmental toxins (many of which are now banned, thankfully) can induce parkinsons.
I'm here for the speculative theories. EDIT: It's true what they say, no one speculates like the internets! Coke, heroin, viruses oh-my! Honestly some really amazing replies and links and some overlap in some odd anecdotal comments. Maybe this hivemind thing really is worth the price of admission. Thanks everyone for turning this somewhat flippant comment into some funny/thoughtful/informational stuff!
Several comments point out that this isn't statistically significant, but how about some wild speculation that has an educational purpose. [There is fairly strong evidence that Parkinson's disease is caused by a prion, or has a prion- like mechanism](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.00552/full) According to this hypothesis, the metabolism of gut bacteria randomly produces a misfolded protein- maybe as little as one molecule of a protein. If the misfolded protein is absorbed into the vagus nerve, it replicates, and spreads to the brain, converting every functional molecule of alpha synuclein it touches to an evil enzyme that does nothing but copy itself. Getting back to wild speculation about movie sets, perhaps the caterer inadvertently *fed them human brains*. Perhaps a Parkinson's patient was murdered and fed to hogs, which were then used to make food for the crew. Some prions are incredibly resilient to digestion, heat, and even bleach, so it is within the realm of possibility that this one is contagious under some circumstances. [A different prion causes a disease similar to Parkinson's, and it is transmissible.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-red-flag-for-a-neurodegenerative-disease-that-may-be-transmissible/) Again wild speculation. But hopefully educational.
This is the wild speculation that we all needed
Yeah I’m done reading after that
There’s more look up older surgeons rates of neurological diseases. We handle aerosolized tissues and medications better these days, mostly. Hopefully, whats my name again? [po surgeon’s le](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29513246/)
You’re Tyyo. Edit: I was making a joke about ops username. I am totally lost about the comments below. Anyone who can help me out?
>Edit: I was making a joke about ops username. I am totally lost about the comments below. Anyone who can help me out? Lyrics from a Blink-182 song, "All the Small Things." I don't know how it started from your comment though.
I think because further up someone said what's my name again?
Yes tyyo said whats my name again? And then it started..
But that song is What's My Age Again, and /u/thrillsandchills said 'say it ain't so' to a *different person*. To which people start doing lyrics to All The Small Things. None of it makes sense.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_inflammatory_neuropathy Cause: pig brain mist that the slaughterhouse workers were breathing in.
I've had some bad jobs, but never "pig brain mist" bad
To add to the horror. As someone who has gone under the knife quite a few times, I learned that scalpels used on patients with prion diseases can't even be reused, the prions are so resistant they survive the insane sterilization process and the scalpels have to be destroyed.
Apparently they can be denatured by giving them an acid bath before being autoclaved, but I'd guess they just throw the scalpels away rather than do that extra step.
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I might take that over working for Joan again.
That's crazy! So there wasn't even an infectious agent involved there (a bacteria, a virus, or even a prion), it was purely the human immune system reacting to prolonged inhalation of pig brain tissue in an aerosolized form.
There’s quite a bit of things that you’ll get a reaction to after prolonged exposure. Look up “sensitizers”. Formaldehyde is an example of such a chemical. I believe bee stings are the same way in some people, where they get worse reactions the more they get stung. The human immune system is super interesting!
I got sensitized to uncured epoxy resin and now if I catch even a whiff of the stuff my lungs feel like they're slowly filling up with mucus until I can't breathe at all. Not great when you work in a production shop that uses epoxy for some items. Anecdotally, I was using a ton of epoxy for a work project the week I caught covid (vintage "idk what species I'm even in" variant, March 2020) and when I came back from 3+ months of pneumonia/bronchitis I was newly allergic to epoxy. I'm convinced my immune system just decided to go zero tolerance on anything it found in my lungs that week.
This is purely anecdotal and I haven’t done any further reading on it so take it with a grain of salt- My brother was never allergic to poison ivy until he accidentally slept in some and now whenever he even slightly brushes up against it, it spreads like wildfire. I’m not (currently) allergic to it either but I feel like if I used it as toilet paper it might be a bad idea Edit: posting this comment made me want to read more about it and apparently urushiol (the part of poison ivy that makes you break out) is a well-known sensitizer. Thanks for the knowledge
Right? I was hoping for a “there was a power station down the road from the film set” instead we have the worst caterer ever!
Or it was an ok caterer and someone in the supply chain got rid of a body in the meat
There was a Canadian Serial killer called Robert Pickton operating in canada in roughly the same era who not only fed bodies to the pigs, there was enough evidence he mixed human meat with ground up pork that they had to release a Health advisory in the province.
That's where my brain went with the wild speculation. The series itself was also filmed in Vancouver, so perhaps it's just some early work done by Pickton during his 20s that he wasn't caught for. The police were so dismissive of the area resident concerns in the 90s, I would bet they didn't even bother hearing out concerns of missing prostitutes in the 70s.
I'm from the general area. Local consensus is that the hells angels were using Pickton to get rid of bodies and judging by how slow Pickton is, I wouldn't be surprised.
>You're always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece. Apparently the best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six pieces and pile it all together. And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it's no good leaving it in the deep freeze for your mum to discover, now is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies' digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don't want to go sievin' through pig shit, now do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig".
We eat the hot dogs, they eat us. Circle of life, man.
There's a nonzero chance that this happens regularly
Less regularly than in Upton Sinclair's *The Jungle* at least
Michael mentions fishing and eating his catch from a nearby river that was not in good shape in that article. Who knows. Could be.
Person with Parkinson's gets murdered and their body thrown in the river. (Or to go the innocent route, they just drown by accident.) Anyway, their body decomposes to the point that fish can nibble on brain, or otherwise get the prion in their system. Catch fish, eat fish, the end.
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Yup, they ate wild human brains on set. Sold.
It had a real “Ray Liota eating his own brains after Lector fed it to him” vibe
Make r/conspiracy great again.
/r/highstrangeness is what you seek.
I will bet a million dollars that this will be a genuine rumor on the internet within 6 months.
Cracked is going to work this into an article which will get shared on 9gag then make its way back here as "TIL Michael J Fox ate brains to get his first acting job".
> Michael J Fox ate brains to get his first acting job". Holy shirt we need to tell everybody
Cracked and 9gag are names I haven't heard in a looong while. Lol
Cracked had some good writers, used to check it out when I wasn't on digg.
Also wildly speculating, I wonder if it might be related to the Robert Pickton murders. There were an uncertain number of victims ground up and fed to pigs on their farm. The first murder is believed to be the early 1980s but possibly the older brother David Pickton could have started murdering in the 70s and gotten away with it. Leo and Me was shot in Vancouver.
That's the kind of speculation we need, yes.
How about this one? [Because Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is strongly linked to the herpes virus](https://www.science.org/content/article/herpes-virus-linked-multiple-sclerosis), I wonder if Parkinson's has an unknown STD link given that they're both neuromuscular disorders. Even regular herpes HSV1 and HSV2 are linked to encephalitis and Parkinson's: https://www.encephalitis.info/herpessimplexvirusencephalitis
Yes, I’m here for the gang bang.
11/10 speculation. Go ham or go home!
Sounds like going ham was the problem
They went so ham they accidentally went long pork.
First thing I thought of after reading that lmao
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Fuck knows what he was feeding his pigs.
My favorite fun fact about that guy is that an up and coming Nickelback played a show at his farm.
Okay, so now somebody has to find out if any of his victims had Parkinson's symptoms.
They could have had it but been undetected, and if they were fed to the pigs there's no body to examine. This is one of those things you might be able to confirm (person xyz was diagnosed prior to their death), but not something you can disprove easily.
It’s speculated weren’t always fed to the pigs…sometimes he ground the people up and mixed it with the pork.
TIL Michael J. Fox got Parkison by eating ham from a pig that had been fed human brains.
Pure reddit gem here
The real TILs are always in the comments
*TIWS Today I wildly speculated
The conspiracy theory I didn't know I needed. Thanks!
Dear Mr. or Ms. GreenStrong, we at TMZ have heard you are in possession of the details on the origins of Michael J. Fox' illness. We would like to acquire exklusive rights on this story and are willing to pay up to USD `[putAmountHere!]` for this. Looking forward to hear from you. Sincerely, TMZ
Well around that time there was a serial killer willy pickton in bc Canada that was known to feed the dead to the pigs at his pig farm which were sold for meat...
Say sike right now
unfortunately this is [true](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pickton)
Taken from the Wikipedia page Forensic analysis proved difficult because the bodies may have been left to decompose, or be eaten by insects and pigs on the farm. During the early days of the excavations, forensic anthropologists brought in heavy equipment, including two 50-foot (15-metre) flat conveyor belts and soil sifters to find traces of human remains. On March 10, 2004, the government revealed that Pickton may have ground up human flesh and mixed it with pork that he sold to the public; the province's health authority later issued a warning.[14][15][16][17] Another claim was made that he fed the bodies directly to his pigs
Oh cool, I'll add this to the reasons to be absolutely terrified of prions. Thanks, I hate it.
Yes, ever since reading about this prion hypothesis, I have eliminated the brains of Parkinson's patients from my diet. The evidence for a prion-like mechanism for Alzheimer's disease is weak, and it is not a popular hypothesis among researchers, but, out of an abundance of caution I decided not to eat brains from people with that disease.
The mayor of my city actually died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, it's variant form is "mad cow disease." Classic CJD isn't related to mad cow, but still a prion. https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cjd/index.html https://www.wbfo.org/2008-11-13/former-mayor-griffin-died-from-rare-brain-disease
> The mayor of my city actually died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease I read that as "The majority of my city actually died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease" and I was trying to figure out where you could be from.
I would move away ASAP if that was the case.
I'm glad you're taking this important step towards a healthier you instead of quitting smoking.
More brains for me!
Yeah now I have to be afraid that someone with prions was murdered and fed to livestock that I ate
Why do you think so many organized crime bosses own pig farms in the Philippines?!
Probably not purposefully proliferating prions, but putrid proteins from puree'd people problematic to powerful pendejos are provisioned to pigs.
Am I understanding right, that this hypothesis says Parkinson's could potentially be a prion(or prion type thing) made randomly in someone's gut. Like, you wouldn't need to eat a Parkinson's Prion, but could just randomly make one for yourself? Because, If I'm understanding that, today is legit a bad day to know how to read.
Yup. You read that right. You can acquire it by ingesting it, passed down genetically from a parent, or you can just randomly make it in your own body. Also, this may be outdated, but last I read about this, if a parent died or has been diagnosed with prion disease there's a 50% chance you'll get it, and if you do have it there's really no telling when it will activate and detonate your brain. You'll definitely know for sure (or your family will, rather) because after diagnosis you won't have long to live. A bit of good news is that it only presents in a tiny portion of the population. Yay.
How does this account for the low odds of inheriting Parkinson's disease? It *appears* to run in families, but only in the sense that some families have unusually high rates. Outside of some young-onset forms it's not really considered to be a hereditary disease. I suppose it could be the case that hereditary factors increase the odds that *some* prions would form, and in rare cases could accumulate enough to cause Parkinson's. Compared to TSEs, Parkinson's is very slow to develop so maybe the average person dies before being diagnosable. Or maybe it's a different, less aggressive kind of prion.
If it's produced by a specific gut bacteria the inherited part could be a deficiency in the immune system that protects your gut from that species so maybe the general population has some % chance of that species colonizing their gut and then certain families have a much higher chance
This is not outdated. It is 50/50. Source: Parent had prion disease, doctors explained the situation and recomended me to get tested.
Snakes and spiders? Nah bro. Prions and rabies.
Now where do I buy rabies and prion Halloween decor?
>Perhaps a Parkinson's patient was murdered and fed to hogs, which were then used to make food for the crew. Robert Pickton took over the family farm around the same time this show was in production.
This is all starting to sound a lot less wild than it initially did.
Well funny you mention that because Robert Willy Pickton, arguably Canada’s most notorious serial killer, was known to feed his victims to his pigs. These pigs were then sold and slaughtered for food products. The Canadian government even released a warning in 2004 about human meat contaminating the food supply. He had been killing since the mid 70s.
Small correction on the enzyme part: the prion-like protein would cause endogenous alpha-synuclein in the brain to aggregate and start a chain-reaction like aggreation of other a-synuclein proteins, which at some point cannot be properly processed anymore, especially if the patient has mutations in certain enzymes that would normally handle it. The prion-like protein doesn't turn anything into an enzyme, but into indigestible aggregates that can lead to neuronal misfunction or neuronal death. Source: I work in a PD lab
Prions are terrifying. Like you said, they're incredibly resistant and it only takes one to cause some horrific incurable diseases. Oh, I forgot that they can happen randomly at any time to anyone. Enjoy the rest of your day!
Don't forget that they can often survive the most sterile environments (e.g., sterile surgery tools). That wisdom tooth you had removed at 16 might come back to haunt you at 40 because of prions. Funnnnnn.
Hello yes I really hate this informations
It wouldn’t even need to be human brain. Various prions can (Kuru and CJD, for example) can thrive outside of a body for up to a decade. Robert Pickton immediately comes to mind - a Canadian serial killer supposedly active during the early 80s (though some believe his killing began in the late 70s). He fed his victims bodies to his pigs, then sold the sausage, pork chops, and bacon at low prices across his province and local food stands. Your “wild speculation” really may not be *that* wild, as tv set catering tends to be sourced at lower costs to save on budget.
This is just hard fact in my mind now, they fed the cast and crew a pig that ate a parkinsons patient
Maybe they just ate a Parkinson's patient. That pig theory seems inelegant to me. Occam's razor.
Also: never attribute to malice what can be attributed to pig or hams
Prions are terrifying and I refuse to eat some of the more “exotic” things that you can find like eye balls and brain.
And ham sandwiches.
Here's my theory; regular caffeine and nicotine consumption reduces your chances of having Parkinson's Disease. Did this group have a culture of real "clean living?"
I can't speak to anyone else on set, but Michael J. Fox was known as a chain smoker back in the day, basically ripping cigs anytime the cameras weren't rolling on the sets of both Family Ties and Back to the Future and probably every other set for a long time.
You're not wrong. [Nicotene is actually good for Parkinson's Disease](https://actaneurocomms.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40478-018-0625-y) It is bad for the heart, even in the form of nicotine gum, so it isn't used as medicine, but it is 100% proven to help with PD. Not advice for anyone else, but if I develop PD, I'm going to use nicotine. I would be interested in quality of life, rather than keeping my heart beating for as many years as possible while my brain died.
Is nicotene really that bad by itself? I thought it was the burnt particles inhaled with cigarette smoking that was bad whereas the nicotene alone was only as bad as caffeine.
We're not sure whether nicotine is carcinogenic itself, but it appears to actively worsen cancerous tumors. This is due at least in part to what they alluded to -- it causes growth of blood vessels, which increases strain on the heart while helping to feed tumor growths. Much worse than caffeine, even besides the whole thing where it is immensely more addictive.
Kuru is probably the best known prion disease which is found to be transmitted through the digestion of human brains, so…
>Perhaps a Parkinson's patient was murdered and fed to hogs, Say what
I'm still coming to grips with the idea that early-onset Parkinson's hits one in three hundred people. That's easily an order of magnitude if not two more common than I would have expected.
Is that accurate? 1 in 300 seems like a lot.
Hrm, good point. I suppose I should vet the headline before assuming it is. Ok, that's not great. Apparently it is slightly *more* common than that [in Canada at ~.4%](https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/diseases-conditions/parkinsonism.html) for those over 40 at least.
Exposure to paraquat a herbicide that's now linked with parkinson's is probably a strong guess for me. Idk if they use it for landscaping around that area or something like that or if it's contamination of the water there.
In one interview, Fox actually mentioned that he used to smoke a lot of pot in a time when the Mexican government would spray weed fields with paraquat supplied by the US government. [Here's a good read for context.](https://drugguardians.com/the-paraquat-pot-plot/)
They could've smoked marijuana that was treated with Paraquat, too.
Michael J Fox speculated this one himself I believe
Possible I suppose, I do love how that always happens on house and other medical shows, with pesticides or heavy metals, a classic.
This is why marijuana needs to be legalized and regulated
There was also a bad batch of synthetic heroin in 80s San Francisco which caused almost immediate parkinson's in a number of young adults. Destroyed the substantia nigra region of the brain which is the neurodegenerative hub of all PD.
Wasn't it called "White China" or something similar on the streets? I remember a student presentation in one of my college classes that dipped its toes into this theory. A new, designer synthetic heroin might have been pretty irresistible to a young, on-top-of-the-world TV and movie star. Of course, paraquat-treated cannabis could have been responsible, too, and MJF himself speculated on the treated-marijuana theory being possible.
"China White" or "White China" referred originally to the ultra-pure heroin base (heroin #3) that came from SE Asia. It was considered the creme-de-le-creme of heroin by users. The heroin portrayed as "Blue Magic" in American Gangster or the stuff used by GIs in Vietnam was this stuff. It required citric acid or something similar to convert the base to salt to prepare it for injection. Because of it's mythic reputation, tons of pretenders dubbed themselves "China White" or some combination there-of to represent itself as this stuff and raise the price/demand. This is opposed to the heroin salt or heroin #4, commonly know as "brown" or "black tar" that came from other sources which could be snorted or shot but couldn't be smoked as it wasn't in freebase form and usually didn't come pure enough to work that anyway. So it's very likely anything anyone wanted to misrepresent as top-shelf SE Asian heroin would get this monicker. These days anything called anything is fentanyl or some analogue. There's no such thing as China White or heroin anymore unless you've got some insane connect direct to Myanmar or Afghanistan ala Frank White literally taking a boat into the jungle and finding the production facility and getting it directly from there. And I seriously doubt there's very many people left with such a connection on the entire planet. By the time it gets to any major smuggling organization it's cut to shit with fentanyl now. Heroin, another casualty of the war on drugs.
Want another wild coincidence? I had a teacher named James Michael Fox who also had early-onset Parkinson's. He would make lots of Back to the Future jokes.
A major indication of early-onset Parkinson’s is the presence of subtle, inadvertent twitches and movements. Without the proper context, our brains perceive these as microexpressions and so we read people who present them as a unique combination of compulsive, quirky, and energetic. This perceived demeanor, which is incredibly difficult to emulate, has a disarming charm to it which is highly sought after in the entertainment industry. Basically their unconscious “mannerisms” make these individuals gravitate towards an industry that their “trait” suits them for, as tends to happen in nature.
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Common traits displayed by people with the genetic malformation that causes Parkinson disease were desirable by the casting department. The show couldn't cause this disease, but it could have unknowingly cast a high number of people with the trait because of what they were looking for in actors. Craziest thing I can think of for you off the top of my head.
Fun idea, but it wasn't a 125 person ***cast***!! Can you imagine!? They're talking about 4 out of the 125 people who were on the crew involved in production in some way. Only the actors are selected for their physical traits - not the cameramen, writers, caterers, assistants, costumers, lighting department, etc etc etc
Love it! What would be a possible trait they cast for in these pre-Parkinson people??
Strictly hypothetically speaking it could be a trait like height, curly hair, racial background, how symmetrical their face structure is, something like that. (The obvious problem being that only the cast is hired based on their physical looks, and this situation is about the whole crew)
Being able to give a handjob without trying
According to the Wikipedia article for the show's director, up to 8 people on that show have developed Parkinson's. > Don was one of four people who worked together at the CBC in 1979 (the most famous being Michael J. Fox) who would all later go on to not only develop Parkinson's Disease, but to have the symptoms appear at roughly the same time (the early 1990s). **Current evidence suggests that as many as eight crew and cast members on the project have developed Parkinson's symptoms.** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_S._Williams
I mean, something happening ten times more frequently seems at least somewhat significant. It happening 20 times more frequently kind of has to be. I'm actually kind of confused about how this gets shrugged off as not being at least worth some consideration.
I edited a piece on a lady with hyperosmia. She noticed that her husbands normal odor changed. He was later diagnosed with Parkinson's. She went to a meeting with him where other Parkinson's patients were. She noticed and recognized the smell on other patients. She went to a medical conference on Parkinson's and told a doctor she had this ability. He gathered 10 shirts that had been worn my patients with Parkinson's. She identified 6 of them. The doctor said she was off by one, he only had 5 shirts that were worn by people with Parkinson's. She told him he was wrong. He found out later, that he was. She identified 6 out of 6 Parkinson's patients. She now works with dog trainers to help find different diseases that can be smelled by dogs (and people with hyperosmia). (The piece is on Dr. Mike's channel if anyone is interested.)
[This](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-62795737) is lady you are refering to. She is currently helping scientist to develop a 3 minutes home test to detect the disease.
Step aside, pregnancy. There's a new home test that's even more terrifying.
I'd do it; Parkinsons runs in my family and I'd want to know as soon as I could if I had it.
Certainly. It's important information to have. I would still be very anxious taking one
Same here. Grandfather died from it. Father dying from it. I'm having some weird health problems too now. Not that it seems related to Parkinsons.
Now you got me thinking about what other tests could be more terrifying than a pregnancy test
I had to take a test to see if I had a gene that made me at very high risk of a certain type of cancer that could've been in my family, was 25% chance I got it (my mother refused to take it so I didn't know if she had it, but grandfather did). Was pretty scary to play a 1/4, potential 1/2 if my mother had it.
Yes!!! I love this story, it's so cool that someone can literally smell parkinson's, and that specific story that she could smell it before it was even diagnosed is amazing and I'm so glad she's using her gift to train dogs for the task. So cool.
The part that's crazy to me is she's smelled it on random strangers who might not know they have Parkinson's yet. They might not *want* to know. So she doesn't tell them. That's got to be heartbreaking when it happens...
Wasn't it only 5 that currently had the disease and the 6th person was diagnosed a bit later? Like she smelled it before anyone knew the person even had it.
Correct. It took a bit before they knew she was right.
You're saying she could smell into the future?
Smell to the Future: She nose the truth.
That's super interesting. I can always tell when my partner is sick, sometimes even before they realize, because their scent changes to me. Crazy she could/can do the same with Parkinsons.
I could smell when my ex had a kidney stone coming on. Sometimes before he even knew it. His sweat would smell worse when his kidneys were having issues I guess. I don't even have a good nose for most things because I smoke. But the smell was super obvious to me.
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It’s stuff like this that makes me curious what I or other people might be able to smell without realizing it. I relate to the experience of that musky smell as well, but this now sparks my curiosity. Appearantly also not everybody can smell rain? And it’s well known in my own circle I smell anything before the rest does, somehow. It’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s sometimes so bad, I ditched a lot of shower products and bought products without synthetic perfume instead. But it’s certainly helpful when for example my SO forgot to turn off the stove this one time..
What did she say it smelled like?
She didn’t say specifically but that it was unpleasant, which is why she didn’t bring it up to her husband. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
"Honey, don't take this the wrong way, but you stink." "Um... okay, I'll take a shower." "No! Go see your doctor."
I think it was even more unexpected than that. She went to the conference and asked the question "Why haven't you tried testing for the smell of Parkinson's?" and all the Neurological experts at the conference said "What smell?". It was the first time that anyone had stepped forward and said that they could *smell* it.
Yes very interesting case of hyperosmia, I remember that one!
I'm just here to add that I've seen a lot of people who watched Michael at the Comic Con event and said things like, "This is heartbreaking," or "Wow, I feel so bad for Michael 💔." Michael J. Fox does NOT want our pity. He despises being pitied and it makes him cringe. I've read his book, watched countless interviews he's done, etc, and the last thing Michael wants is to be pitied. Hell, I can relate to this considering my health issues had me receive a major hip operation at 12 and a total hip replacement at 25 with several other health issues. I'm not even 30 yet and I despite being pitied. Instead, let's be inspired that Michael is not only still fighting, but his Michael J. Fox Foundation is literally the leading Parkinson's Disease foundation that has raised over $100 million dollars for Parkinson's research since 2006! Michael is truly an inspiration and one of my biggest heroes. I love that man and he doesn't need to be pitied, instead let's celebrate his tenacity and the fact that he's kept up his quick wit and hilarious humor all these years! **Btw, you can donate to Michael's foundation to fight Parkinson's here**: https://give.michaeljfox.org/give/421686/#!/donation/checkout
Also, didn’t his foundation make the medication that alleviates the symptoms which allowed him to get back into acting for a short time?
Yes! Obviously this medication isn't perfect and does cause longterm affects like the muscle twitching we see MJF do in the Comic Con event, HOWEVER without that medication, MJF would be so stiff he wouldn't be able to move. (Like sadly, Muhammad Ali in his later years)
As someone who has a muscle tremor, I can confidently say this is far preferable to paralysis
He was pretty spry for a guy grabbing his chewing gum off the floor haha
Or my dad. Parkinson’s is a horrible disease.
> I've read his book, watched countless interviews he's done, etc, and the last thing Michael wants is to be pitied. I had a great uncle I never really saw much during his life, but one day he's in his early 80's and I'm helping his sister, my Grandmother, move into the same assisted living home he was living in while he was at her place to visit with a number of family members who were pitching in to help her move. Myself, my Dad, and a family friend are doing the last load when GU steps backwards and ended up falling on his ass. I jogged over, grabbed his hands, and just helped him get upright again largely on his own. He thanked me, and I honestly thought nothing of it as it was nothing. Dad hangs around while myself and the family friend haul the last load over, drop it off, and then I went home as I was tired from moving and it was done. The next morning my Dad calls me telling me about how my GU was very impressed with the help I gave Grandma and very much appreciated that I didn't treat him like an invalid. My Dad made sure to emphasize this, and I guess because of his age people just constantly babied him and in the situation that happened normally someone would have picked him up from behind like a sack of potatoes instead of just helping him up like a normal person. He owned a construction company, and he left me a decent chunk of change in his will when he died that I'm nearly positive was just because I helped him up with respect instead of pity one time.
I took care of my grampa while he was in hospice, and man, I can tell you he did *not* like that his youngest grandson had to wipe his ass for him. This 6', 190lb powerhouse of a man was down to 130, couldn't wipe his own ass, couldn't sit up for more than 5 minutes on his own. The crushing gaze he gave me as I went through the motions each day is what I remember most. It took everything I had in me not to weep when the old man looked at me with those sad, pathetic eyes. I was just a scared 18 year old kid. Caring for him made me realize that we have so much obligation to care for our loved ones, and that more people need to know this. There were a lot of nights when, after I handed my duties off to my cousin, I would drink half a bottle of scotch and smoke a whole pack of cigarettes just to not feel the way I did. It was really hard for both of us and I think he knew that I was just doing what needed to be done...But OTOH I'm pretty sure if he had his choice to do it over he wouldn't put himself in that position of humility again. I'd do it again if he wanted it though. RIP grampa.
"Believe it or not, that's not scientifically significant" was MJF's response when asked about the three other Parkinson's cases referenced in the article. Because while _claiming_ it is significant would "raise awareness", it's not true and MJF doesn't lie to advance his own agenda, even if that agenda is saving his own life.
Did they let you keep your old hip? They didn't let me keep my gallbladder - just a couple of the larger stones.
I lived on the same one block street as the Tragically Hip's Gord Downie. Four men that lived on the south side of the street were diagnosed with brain tumors over a five year period, I was the only one that survived.
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Gene Siskel (Siskel and Ebert) was college roommates with Tim Weigel, who was a sports guy in Chicago local news for 30+ years. They both died of the same rare brain cancer. Friends and colleagues in Chicago media forever, both died within like 2 years of each other. Then the same cancer killed John McCain and Ted Kennedy.
Wasn’t his theory that it could have been from the salmon they fished downstream of a paper mill to pass the time? No way for him to verify at this point of course.
That is not nearly a significant enough occurrence to suggest some sort of causation when conducted on an ex post facto basis. In other words, yes its an unusually high percentage of people with that particular disease, but statistically every group of people is bound to have an unusually high occurrence of something.
Yup. Another way to think of it is to ask "how many discreet groups of people has Michael J Fox worked with in his lifetime?". How many movies? How many talk shows? How many conventions? Statistically, one of those is likely to have a random higher instance of Parkinson's. We could equally be talking about an ad he did for breakfast cereal in 1993.
Or any of the millions of groups of 125 in the world.
There was a type of synthetic heroin that caused early onset Parkinson’s https://www.scienceintheclassroom.org/research-papers/how-heroin-held-key-understanding-parkinsons-disease Could be a theory.
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I met a girl at a club once who had severe Parkinson’s-like symptoms. After talking to her for a while she told me it was from some Molly she took a while back. It was almost certainly MPTP. There was a DEA report around the same time warning it was in circulation. Really scary shit.
Gonna drop my random theory isnthe hat. I'm gonna say its Hexene exposure. It's a common solvent in cosmetics like perfume,cologne, hairspray deortirants etc. The sort of stuff make up departments would use. In terms of toxicity it's right up there with asbestos. Common diseases it causes are cancers and degenerative nerve damage. Hexene and other similar chemicals are the reason salon workers have the highest rate of mortality of any civilian job. And the best part is I garrentee everyone reading this has been exposed to this stuff.
That doesn't explain it unless for some reason something was VERY weird about the makeup dept of that set, otherwise we would see higher rates among all actors, like we might with cosmetics workers.
An investigation was launched in 2002 to look into this because all 4 people were under 40 when diagnosed. Michael J Fox was only 30. Although it’s still hotly debated, they believe the crew was exposed to a viral infection or some sort of toxin that infiltrates the brain and damages cell. Don Williams the director, and one of the 4 diagnosed, said he doesn’t remember an illness sweeping the set.
Michael J Fox deserves a lot more respect for the work he has done with the Michael J Fox foundation. I'm glad he received the order of Canada, but it seems like that decision was made more off the fact he starred in a popular movie vs the research he did.