2001

Pollution in the Okanagan Valley is high. With its Go Green campaign, the city of Kelowna is trying to reduce air pollution by restricting the use of cars through car pooling, the use of public transportation, and the use of bicycles.

They are also attempting to reduce smoke by promoting "high tech" non-polluting wood-burning stoves as an alternative to the use of BC Gas heating and the escalating costs of BC Gas.

The provincial government has just issued 22 permits to allow beehive burners to continue to pollute.

About 6 months ago I was just finishing up 12 days without a break. It was 5:30 Friday afternoon and I was looking forward to 2 days of needed rest. My reverie was suddenly shattered when my receptionist reminded me that, during a moment of weakness about 4 weeks earlier, I had agreed to work Saturday.

In the late 1980s I was privileged to be involved in the care of a unique young man with AIDS. Dr Peter Jepson-Young developed severe Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia during the first month after he completed his internship and battled the disease for over 5 years. This was in the early days of the HIV epidemic and the only antiviral available was AZT. In the later years of his fight, Peter developed extensive Kaposi’s sarcoma and cytomegalic virus retinitis severe enough to eventually render him blind.

Introduction

The topics discussed in this issue provide the platform upon which modern medical management for Parkinson’s disease is built, and from which we can expect new directions of management to emerge.

Over the last 40 years, Parkinson’s disease has changed from being one of the most obscure of the chronic neurological disorders, and one for which treatment was minimally effective—to the best-understood neurodegenerative disorder and one for which we have excellent medical and surgical treatment for symptoms.