The American Spectator

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p> SMACKDOWN br> Re: Jeffrey Lord's Borking Rush : /p> p>Another terrific piece. Excellent! br> -- Ken McAdams /p>

Many of the points in your piece are true, but the thing that got Rush in trouble is being ill informed about Parkinson's Disease and the calls he took from equally uninformed persons to back up his ignorance.

I too am a conservative baby boomer, also a Vietnam vet and the husband of a wonderful woman who suffers with "young onset" Parkinson's. Same as Fox. Rush did not know that Michael J. Fox was showing the effects of his medication (dyskinesia) and not the disease in those commercials. And one of his callers, purporting to be a nurse, said the Muhammed Ali was an example of a person on Parkinson's medication. Wrong!

Ali does not take any medication for religious reasons. He is what Parkinson's actually looks like. When most people take a medication it works to alleviate symptoms for a specific period of time.

Not so for Parkinson's sufferers.

p>Sinemet (the primary drug for Parkinson's) works like a sine wave. Sometimes too little, sometimes too much (dyskinesia) and sometimes not at all. It is very unpredictable. It usually takes about 45 minutes to an hour to start working and then the effect may last for 10 minutes or up to 3 hours. From day to day and dose to dose there is no consistency.

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