Featured Up-Date New treatment alternative

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com.
Reported January 17, 2003
Levodopa Treating Tourette Syndrome

ST. LOUIS (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Nearly 230,000 people in the United
States are living with Tourette syndrome. Doctors say it's difficult
to diagnose and even harder to treat. Now, they may have a new way to
treat the condition.
As a detective, Bob Marbs is good at cracking cases and those
sleuthing abilities have come in handy. He says, "I had always
suspected or at least for the last 10 or 15 years that I did have
Tourette's because I did a lot of reading on it."
His suspicions were right. Marbs was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome
last year after 53 years of living with tics.
"I had a lot of eye-blinking and I would open my eyes a lot real
wide," he says. His tics include shoulder shrugs, clearing his
throat, and excessive blinking.
Neuropsychiatrist Kevin Black, M.D., says Tourette's may be connected
to the hormone dopamine in the brain.
"There's some suggestions that there are abnormalities in the cells
on the other side of the synapse, the ones that are actually
releasing the dopamine," says Dr. Black, of Washington University in
St. Louis.
To test the theory, he studied the Parkinson's drug levodopa. It
boosts dopamine production in the brain. In patients who received
levodopa, there was a 40-percent reduction in tics.
Dr. Black says, "This might be a new treatment alternative for people
with Tourette syndrome."
Marbs is taking part in a larger study on the drug. For the study,
he's not sure if he's getting the drug or not, but says he's happy to
be contributing to research. He says, "The tics that I have, I'm used
to, but we're not good friends. I would like to be rid of these tics
and if there was a drug, and hopefully there is, I would take it."
And after 50 years, he could finally close the case.
Side effects of levodopa may include nausea and lightheadedness, but
Dr. Black says most people don't suffer any side effects. He also
says about 3 percent of the population will have at least one tic in
their lifetime even while taking the drug.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Education
----------------------------------------------------------------

Slim chance of smaller classes

EDUCATION - HUGH REILLY

MANY people imagine that if class sizes could be reduced as easily as
the size of Kate Winslet's bottom is for magazine covers, teachers
would call out "Gouranga! Be happy!"

This is as spurious as suggesting that banning hip-hop music will
lead to a decrease in gun culture.

Given the choice, most teachers would rather rap with a class of
malleable 33 first-year greenhorns than a dozen disaffected S4 raging
bulls.

Present class limits were set in the 1970s, a golden age of education
when rote learning and routine thrashing of teenagers made the
Scottish school system the envy of the world. A maximum of 33 pupils
in first and second year and 30 in the upper school was deemed to be
the ideal, figures that were probably the result of a compromise, ie
the Educational Institute of Scotland said 20, the government of the
day said 34, thus 33 was another union victory.

Quite why it drops from 33 to 30 for older pupils is beyond me -
perhaps the legislators foresaw the obesity crisis causing a
classroom crush. My guess is that the figures were plucked out of the
air, the tried-and-tested method of creating education visions (see
target reductions in exclusion and truancy for details).

These days, the class maximum has, in reality, become the minimum, as
school managers strive to be cost effective. It's much more efficient
to have 60 pupils sitting in two classes of 30, even if eight kids
are dyslexic, six have severe learning difficulties, three are on
Ritalin and another soul suffers from Tourette's Syndrome. When class
sizes were set decades ago, social inclusion was not part of the
agenda.

Recently, I had the privilege of teaching a class of 22 fourth-year
foundation pupils, six of whom were starlets of the school's anger
management troupe. Each lesson was a rerun of Jesus Christ Superstar,
with me in the role of Ciaphas - "Tell the rabble to be quiet, I
anticipate a riot."

The sad truth is that mainstream schools across Scotland are not
coping with the influx of special needs pupils and, allied to general
pupil indiscipline, there has been growing pressure to reduce sizes
as if it were the panacea for every education ill. Of course, the
real solution is to put proper support into the classroom for those
pupils who need it and who are in fact legally entitled to it.
Bizarrely, such is the scarcity of Support For Learning (SFL) staff,
subject teachers have to "bid" for their presence. Better to say that
the bidding system is rather like a lottery funding application;
those with the savvy to sell their case receive assistance.

Like the Lotto, this means that the least deserving are often the
greatest beneficiaries of management largesse. Think private school
sports complexes funded by Thunderball.

In secondaries, shyster science staff, already limited to teaching a
maximum of 20 pupils and whose classroom activity is assisted by lab
technicians, somehow manage to convince management that the presence
of SFL teachers is essential. Meanwhile, down in the social subjects
area, poor chalkies are expected to get on with the job of teaching
33 kids with a variety of educational needs.

Slimming down classes will do a fat lot of good if we persist in
merely going through the motions of helping special needs students
and learners with emotional and behavioural disorders.

Article URL
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=49812003

----------------------------------------------------------------
Individual Achievement with TS
----------------------------------------------------------------

From Gloucester Daily Times Home Page January 22, 2003

Building his future ... one Popsicle stick at a time

By GREG COOK
Staff writer
Brian Polizzia has always been good with his hands. Even though he
has long struggled with Tourette's syndrome, attention deficit
disorder and bipolar disorder, he could draw and he could build
things -- house models and club houses and bird houses.
"As soon as I was strong enough to hold a hammer and strike a nail I
was building things," he says.
Polizzia is a short, solid man, with wavy brown hair, a mustache and
goatee. His palms are calloused and his fingers marked with cuts that
are healing.
Polizzia was born in Gloucester 28 years ago but moved with his
parents to the San Diego, Calif., area when he was 5. He helped his
father fix up their first house there -- painting the front fence and
a wall in his bedroom, gardening. He used to take his homework and go
sit at construction sites and watch the guys work. One time, when he
was 7 or 8, one of the guys helped him hammer together a bird house
from construction scraps.

To Read the whole Article URL
http://www.ecnnews.com/cgi-bin/g/gwed.pl?slug-GPOLIZ21

----------------------------------------------------------------
More TS in Hollywood
----------------------------------------------------------------

Ed Norton
Invisible man
By Sam Allis, Globe Staff, 1/12/2002
NEW YORK - Edward Norton could be a dweeb on the tenure track in
anthropology at Princeton. Or a tyro at Morgan Stanley. He probably
isn't asked much to take his shoes off at airports. You forget him
the minute you see him. Except on the big screen. You remember him
there. Norton is an actor with the benign looks of a suburban soccer
dad and an uncommon intelligence infused by a gorgeous natural
talent. He leaves indelible tracks all over a film. It's usually
after the credits roll that audiences start to grasp what he just did…
Norton's next project is to adapt to the screen ''Motherless
Brooklyn,'' a book about a gang in Brooklyn, one of whose members has
Tourette's Syndrome. He'll write and star in it as that member, and
perhaps direct it. It's classic Norton, a complicated part requiring
Oscar-obvious, high-wire virtuosity.
''I laugh when I read the book about Tourette's because I think I'm
about three synapses away from being autistic,'' he says. ''I
compulsively mimic people's rhythms and ticks. I like doing funny
voices and putting on clothes and beards and stuff.''

The Boston Glob
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/012/living/Ed_Norton+.shtml

----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
Other articles that mention Tourette Syndrome.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----

HOPES FOR A NEW HOME FOR MUM IN MIX-UP OVER RENT ARREARS
12:00 - 13 January 2003
BY SHANE DEAN
http://www.thisisnorthdevon.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?
nodeId=103352&command=displayContent&sourceNode=103341&contentPK=36131
32

Raising a relative's child? There's help
By Lola Sherman
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
January 15, 2003
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20030115-
9999_1mc15kin.html

If links do not work because they are not completely active, simply
cut and past the entire url/link into a browser window on your
computer. Sometimes the active links are cut off in the line wrap
of the text If you have any difficulty contact me below.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Credits
----------------------------------------------------------------

Paul Marshall***
Tourette – Updates Moderator
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Tourette-Updates

To receive these updates in your personal mail box send a blank e-
mail to:
Tourette-Updates-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Comments or Questions:
Paul@...

For more information on Tourette Syndrome you may visit my site at:
http://paul.tourette.info we are always adding and updating files.

***Permission is granted for posting this message in other groups and
forums when including everything from the credits lines in your post
for our service at Tourette – Updates.

----------------------------------------------------------------
End
----------------------------------------------------------------