By Patrick McNamara, PhD, About.com

The Michael J. Fox Foundation has launched a new and invaluable resource for persons with Parkinson's disease, PD research advocates and scientists working on PD. The new resource is an online website that contains all kinds of content on PD. While it is targeted mainly to research scientists working on PD, it is my impression that everyone can benefit from reading and contributing to the site. Check it out at www.pdonlineresearch.org.

The Foundation sees the site as " a collaborative community for technical discussion and problem-solving in Parkinson’s disease science...We depend on the entire community to engage on this new platform and commit to hastening research toward better treatments and ultimately a cure for PD."

My own feeling is that persons with PD who are not scientists need to be involved in a venture like this as they can present insights and research questions that the scientists often don't think to ask. For example, REM Behavior Disorder was something that was not even on the radar screen of scientists studying PD a decade ago... but patients and their families kept complaining to clinicians that they could not sleep, that they had violent nightmares and that they jump out of bed and enact these terrifying dreams etc. Now we know that REM Behavior Disorder often precedes PD motor symptoms by years and thus it has become an invaluable tool in the fight to identify persons at risk for the disease.

Other examples of patients and families pushing forward the scientific agenda could be multiplied indefinitely but my point is that all websites on PD, including research-oriented sites, should include some sort of mechanism that allows input from patients and their families.