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> It is believed that a combination of genetic and environmental factors, such as pesticides and pollution, may cause Parkinson’s; Fox later learned that at lea

> It is believed that a combination of genetic and environmental factors, such as pesticides and pollution, may cause Parkinson’s; Fox later learned that at least four cast members of Leo & Me, a Canadian TV show he starred in as a teenager, also developed early-onset Parkinson’s. “But believe it or not, that’s not enough people to be defined as a cluster, so there hasn’t been much research into that. But it is interesting. I can think of a thousand possible scenarios: I used to go fishing in a river near paper mills and eat the salmon I caught; I’ve been to a lot of farms; I smoked a lot of pot in high school when the government was poisoning the crops. But you can drive yourself crazy trying to figure it out.” Completely unfounded speculation, but I always wondered what the effect of the absolutely grueling schedule of simultaneously filming Family Ties and Back to the Future was. (Sleeping in cars, working til 7am, just a couple hours of sleep a night). > Gale said that Fox's youth meant he could cope with less sleep than usual. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future#Filming_with_Fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future#Filming_wit...) They'd already filmed half the movie and brought Fox in as the replacement. With so much on the line, did he take more than just coffee to keep going? Drug-induced 'Parkinsonism' is a thing. Having it progress like typical Parkinson's is rare, but it happens. (https://www.parkinsons.org.uk/information-and-support/types-parkinsonism https://www.parkinsons.org.uk/information-and-support/types-...).

hobby-coder-guy 6y ago
> Completely unfounded speculation So don’t
melling 6y ago
I guess i would say it doesn’t really matter how it happened. His foundation has been working for decades to help find a cure: https://www.michaeljfox.org/ https://www.michaeljfox.org/ Andy Grove (Intel) died from Parkinson’s too: https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0128/070.html?sh=252b9495641e https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0128/070.html?sh=252b9495... Linda Ronstadt and Ozzy Osbourne are a couple of other famous people with it.
- arp242 6y ago
  It's a small miracle that Ozzy Osbourne is still alive at the age of 71 at all, considering his decades of alcohol and drug abuse were wild and excessive even by "sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll" standards. He maxed out on constitution during character creation.
  - mariuolo 6y ago
    He wrote a book about it (Trust Me, I'm Dr. Ozzy). He basically says "don't do like I did".
- vanderZwan 6y ago
  > I guess i would say it doesn’t really matter how it happened. Maybe not on an individual level, but if it was (for example) the salmon near the factory then that might affect thousands of people and it would be important to stop this at the source. Tangentially related: I recently learned from a YT interview with James Burke that modern epidemiology was born when John Snow identified the true cause of the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak using statistics and an accidental double-blind experiment set-up[0][1]. So I do understand Fox' bewilderment that five people from the same set developing Parkinson's disease is not considered worthy of follow-up research. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUb6Sv-rUv0&t=13m23s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUb6Sv-rUv0&t=13m23s [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outb...
influx 6y ago
Hrrm, interesting theory: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051214084800.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051214084800.h... "Adults who abuse cocaine might increase their risk of developing Parkinson's disease" It wouldn't be too far out to imagine a young Hollywood star in the 80s might abuse illegal drugs to stay awake.
- 1996 6y ago
  It seems to me it's of poor taste to accuse someone sick and doing everything they can to help awareness about a disease of abusing cocaine.
  - bigmattystyles 6y ago
    Yea, I agree with you. And even if he did, he’s not undeserving of compassion.
  - interestica 6y ago
    In the article he mentions using illegal drugs and how quitting drinking may have saved his marriage. Do you think it's really that crazy that a young beginning-to-rise star living in Los Angeles in the 80s and under incredible pressure to perform without sleep used something to stay awake? It's not a condemnation.
    - Spare_account 6y ago
      > It's not a condemnation. FWIW I'm inferring from the post you replied to that they think 'drugs are bad' so saying that Fox did drugs in his youth is a condemnation when you have that mindset.
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        Sure, but you can’t reasonably restrict your speech such that no one can take your ideas, apply their own strict lens, find some reason for there to be offense using that lens, and then object to your speech on that basis. You’d have a hard time discussing the weather under those rules of conversation. If someone thinks drugs are so bad that an even-handed curiosity whether a particular drug could have been at play is unseemly, the problem is with them, not with the reasonably sanely grounded curiosity. Replace cocaine with alcohol or aspirin and @influx’s comment is the same.
DoreenMichele 6y ago
Sleep Disturbance as Potential Risk and Progression Factor for Parkinson’s Disease Emerging evidence from the field of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research implicates sleep quality as an important factor underlying risk and disease progression in this disorder [2, 3]. There is also evidence that the presence of sleep disturbances may increase the risk of developing PD. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6700634/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6700634/ Edit: The mechanism is even partially established. Serious sleep deprivation is known to elevate the levels of two proteins that are known to be risk factors for certain kinds of dementia, one of which is Tau (I don't recall the other): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6360494/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6360494/
m463 6y ago
A close family member had parkinson's. A total of 5 coworkers developed parkinson's disease. There was speculation that some sort of common environmental factor was involved, but there was no medical (or legal) way of determining if or what it was. None of these people had grueling schedules, drug or alcohol problems or outlier lifestyles and all had office jobs. There was some speculation about an office for two of them that had once been a chem lab.
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  > A close family member had parkinson's. A total of 5 coworkers developed parkinson's disease. There was speculation that some sort of common environmental factor was involved, but there was no medical (or legal) way of determining if or what it was. For anyone who hasn't seen Dark Waters yet, I would recommend watching it, or at least reading up on the Chemical Industry's shady business practices. Let's just say we no longer use non-stick pans in our household. (This is not to say it has a connection specifically to Parkinson's).
  - cannedslime 6y ago
    Nonstick pans are a crazy invention. Heat it up too much and toxic vapors are emitted, vapors strong enough that its not uncommon for parakeets and other small birds to die in such a presence.
    - bbarnett 6y ago
      Yup. 100% safe, as long as one never ever heats up teflon beyond a certain point. FDA validated testing, therefore, shows it as safe! Yet who one Earth has never, even for a few seconds, had something happen while cooking. A distraction. A mistake with the heat. An accident requiring attention, a small child taking attention away. One mistake, one moment of error, and now the teflon is toxic. Meanwhile, there are endless warning labels all over packages for absolutely absurd things. Such a bizarre world. What gets me, is that there are all sorts of replacement non-stick coatings. All brand new, all "Oh yes that's perfectly safe!", people happily buying those. Iron or stainless steel for me, thank you.
btilly 6y ago
There is no need to speculate about what more might have been happening than what was said. For example consider his pot comment. We have known for many years that common herbicides, for example paraquat and maneb, can cause Parkinson's. Sometimes surprisingly quickly. In the 1980s we still used cyperquat which is even more closely related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTP which can (when injected) create almost instant Parkinson's. And not only did we use those herbicides, law enforcement specifically used them to target marijuana. So it is quite reasonable that smoking marijuana that had been sprayed with an herbicide could have caused him early onset Parkinson's. If the bad batch was smoked on set at Leo & Me, you've got the whole cluster explained. Or maybe they were unlucky and filmed directly downwind of someone spraying too much herbicide. There are a lot of possible ways that it could have happened.

hobby-coder-guy 6y ago

> Completely unfounded speculation So don’t

melling 6y ago

I guess i would say it doesn’t really matter how it happened. His foundation has been working for decades to help find a cure: https://www.michaeljfox.org/ https://www.michaeljfox.org/ Andy Grove (Intel) died from Parkinson’s too: https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0128/070.html?sh=252b9495641e https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0128/070.html?sh=252b9495... Linda Ronstadt and Ozzy Osbourne are a couple of other famous people with it.

arp242 6y ago
It's a small miracle that Ozzy Osbourne is still alive at the age of 71 at all, considering his decades of alcohol and drug abuse were wild and excessive even by "sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll" standards. He maxed out on constitution during character creation.
- mariuolo 6y ago
  He wrote a book about it (Trust Me, I'm Dr. Ozzy). He basically says "don't do like I did".
vanderZwan 6y ago
> I guess i would say it doesn’t really matter how it happened. Maybe not on an individual level, but if it was (for example) the salmon near the factory then that might affect thousands of people and it would be important to stop this at the source. Tangentially related: I recently learned from a YT interview with James Burke that modern epidemiology was born when John Snow identified the true cause of the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak using statistics and an accidental double-blind experiment set-up[0][1]. So I do understand Fox' bewilderment that five people from the same set developing Parkinson's disease is not considered worthy of follow-up research. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUb6Sv-rUv0&t=13m23s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUb6Sv-rUv0&t=13m23s [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outb...

influx 6y ago

Hrrm, interesting theory: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051214084800.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051214084800.h... "Adults who abuse cocaine might increase their risk of developing Parkinson's disease" It wouldn't be too far out to imagine a young Hollywood star in the 80s might abuse illegal drugs to stay awake.

1996 6y ago
It seems to me it's of poor taste to accuse someone sick and doing everything they can to help awareness about a disease of abusing cocaine.
- bigmattystyles 6y ago
  Yea, I agree with you. And even if he did, he’s not undeserving of compassion.
- interestica 6y ago
  In the article he mentions using illegal drugs and how quitting drinking may have saved his marriage. Do you think it's really that crazy that a young beginning-to-rise star living in Los Angeles in the 80s and under incredible pressure to perform without sleep used something to stay awake? It's not a condemnation.
  - Spare_account 6y ago
    > It's not a condemnation. FWIW I'm inferring from the post you replied to that they think 'drugs are bad' so saying that Fox did drugs in his youth is a condemnation when you have that mindset.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      Sure, but you can’t reasonably restrict your speech such that no one can take your ideas, apply their own strict lens, find some reason for there to be offense using that lens, and then object to your speech on that basis. You’d have a hard time discussing the weather under those rules of conversation. If someone thinks drugs are so bad that an even-handed curiosity whether a particular drug could have been at play is unseemly, the problem is with them, not with the reasonably sanely grounded curiosity. Replace cocaine with alcohol or aspirin and @influx’s comment is the same.

DoreenMichele 6y ago

Sleep Disturbance as Potential Risk and Progression Factor for Parkinson’s Disease Emerging evidence from the field of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research implicates sleep quality as an important factor underlying risk and disease progression in this disorder [2, 3]. There is also evidence that the presence of sleep disturbances may increase the risk of developing PD. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6700634/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6700634/ Edit: The mechanism is even partially established. Serious sleep deprivation is known to elevate the levels of two proteins that are known to be risk factors for certain kinds of dementia, one of which is Tau (I don't recall the other): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6360494/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6360494/

m463 6y ago

A close family member had parkinson's. A total of 5 coworkers developed parkinson's disease. There was speculation that some sort of common environmental factor was involved, but there was no medical (or legal) way of determining if or what it was. None of these people had grueling schedules, drug or alcohol problems or outlier lifestyles and all had office jobs. There was some speculation about an office for two of them that had once been a chem lab.

CodeGlitch 6y ago
> A close family member had parkinson's. A total of 5 coworkers developed parkinson's disease. There was speculation that some sort of common environmental factor was involved, but there was no medical (or legal) way of determining if or what it was. For anyone who hasn't seen Dark Waters yet, I would recommend watching it, or at least reading up on the Chemical Industry's shady business practices. Let's just say we no longer use non-stick pans in our household. (This is not to say it has a connection specifically to Parkinson's).
- cannedslime 6y ago
  Nonstick pans are a crazy invention. Heat it up too much and toxic vapors are emitted, vapors strong enough that its not uncommon for parakeets and other small birds to die in such a presence.
  - bbarnett 6y ago
    Yup. 100% safe, as long as one never ever heats up teflon beyond a certain point. FDA validated testing, therefore, shows it as safe! Yet who one Earth has never, even for a few seconds, had something happen while cooking. A distraction. A mistake with the heat. An accident requiring attention, a small child taking attention away. One mistake, one moment of error, and now the teflon is toxic. Meanwhile, there are endless warning labels all over packages for absolutely absurd things. Such a bizarre world. What gets me, is that there are all sorts of replacement non-stick coatings. All brand new, all "Oh yes that's perfectly safe!", people happily buying those. Iron or stainless steel for me, thank you.

btilly 6y ago

There is no need to speculate about what more might have been happening than what was said. For example consider his pot comment. We have known for many years that common herbicides, for example paraquat and maneb, can cause Parkinson's. Sometimes surprisingly quickly. In the 1980s we still used cyperquat which is even more closely related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTP which can (when injected) create almost instant Parkinson's. And not only did we use those herbicides, law enforcement specifically used them to target marijuana. So it is quite reasonable that smoking marijuana that had been sprayed with an herbicide could have caused him early onset Parkinson's. If the bad batch was smoked on set at Leo & Me, you've got the whole cluster explained. Or maybe they were unlucky and filmed directly downwind of someone spraying too much herbicide. There are a lot of possible ways that it could have happened.