> Until they're a practical alternative, I don't see an ethical problem using animal testing when it's a disease as serious as Parkinson's. In this case, there

> Until they're a practical alternative, I don't see an ethical problem using animal testing when it's a disease as serious as Parkinson's. In this case, there is already a well developed alternative - electrical deep brain stimulation. That procedure took decades, and many macaque lives, and distressing human failures, to be refined through trial and error to its clinical status today as an imperfect, transient way to relieve symptoms in some patients who can afford repeated surgeries for the rest of their lives, until the disease or their age progresses so far that surgery is no longer an option. What is to be gained by repeating that developmental journey just to get a second form of DBS up to the same level as the first? Any form of DBS is not a resolution for PD, which is a degenerative loss of dopamine producing neurones in the substantia nigra. Electrical DBS does not arrest the neuropathy. NIR DBS will not arrest the neuropathy, no matter how refined. The only way to stop the suffering is to cure the disease. Before any cure can be found for PD, scientists have to develop a better understanding of its aetiology. That requires still more basic cell biology research, and more funding, more lab work, and more time. Until there's a breakthrough, those patients who have the resources, and enough ounces of luck, already have the option of attempting to alleviate their symptoms with electrical DBS. It's the same story with stem cell transplants. If you can get the stem cells into the substantia nigra in enough numbers, the patient's dopamine levels will rise and offer symptomatic relief for awhile, albeit with an increased risk of tumour formation. But the disease will still be there, and the neurones will keep dying off, and the dopamine performance will dwindle over time. PD is just like that. One day, it will just disappear. But that won't be because someone put a powerful light inside of the human body. It will be because generations of dedicated scientists kept doing the fundamental research required to understand the complex biological systems that control dopamine production, for long enough to understand and defeat this cruel disease.