Parkinson

Toy CaldwellMarshall Tucker BandSPARTANBURG, S.C. -- Toy T. Caldwell Jr., former lead guitar player and singer for the Marshall Tucker Band, died yesterday, and the cause was under investigation, a coroner said.Mr. Caldwell's body was found by his wife, Abbie Good Caldwell, at their home in Moore, about 80 miles northwest of Columbia, said Bill Doble, vice president of music for Cabin Fever Entertainment, for whom Mr. Caldwell recorded. Mr. Doble said Mr. Caldwell, 45, had been ill with influenza and bronchitis.

The pharmaceutical industry and the National Institutes of Health spend billions of dollars annually on medical research techniques that have been rendered obsolete by technological advances. Adult stem cell research is key to our status as the world's leader in medical research. The continued use of animals to test the effectiveness of medications and health interventions for humans is akin to using smoke signals instead of e-mail as a method of communication. Animal testing has never really worked.

My face looked like a dry, glazed doughnut for eight years, until I read your column about using milk of magnesia on the face and scalp. My dermatologist had been treating my scalp, but I got nowhere. Both problems disappeared after one application of MoM. Milk of magnesia (magnesium hydroxide aka MoM) has been used for more than a century as an oral laxative. More recently, we have heard from readers that if this chalky liquid is applied to underarms, it acts as a deodorant. Someone else told us that topical applications of milk of magnesia on the face while showering could be effective for flakes.

VATICAN CITY - In a dramatic illustration of his decline, a grimacing Pope John Paul II appeared before thousands of Easter pilgrims yesterday and struggled to speak but ultimately failed. The pope has not been heard in public since his release from the hospital two weeks ago, and yesterday's appearance was a bittersweet moment for the faithful who crowded into St. Peter's Square for the culmination of Christianity's holiest week. "This was the most emotional thing in the world for me, to see the holy father," said Maria Ines Saavedra, 50, who came to Rome from Mexico.

Six military veterans from Maryland pleaded guilty to fraud charges this week in a scheme to obtain federal military benefits and state tax breaks with faked documentation claiming they were exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, according to the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office. The veterans allegedly paid thousands of dollars in cash to David Clark, the former deputy chief of veterans claims in the state Department of Veterans Affairs Office, in exchange for $1.4 million in fraudulent benefits and tax breaks, prosecutors said.

PHILADELPHIA - In retrospect, Janine Swift had never been quite healthy. She didn't have much energy, rarely running or playing outdoors with other children, said her mother, Theresa, 41, of Collingswood, N.J."As a little girl, her hands sometimes used to tremble," her mother said, but doctors could offer no explanation. "We thought maybe she was just a nervous kid."There was nothing to warn of the latent disease that would suddenly attack her nervous system in March 1995, when Janine turned 16, a disease surprisingly common - yet unknown to many doctors - that is pushing scientists to the limits of microbiology.

Remember the turtles? The little green water turtles, about the size of a silver dollar. Pet shops, discount stores and tourist traps sold them by the thousands -- and probably by the millions -- for a long time. You supposedly could make these reptiles feel at home by purchasing a "habitat" for them -- usually a round plastic dish adorned with a plastic palm tree. The sight of little green turtles sulking in tepid water in a dish on someone's television set was a fairly common sight in Baby Boom America.

Frank A. DeCosta Jr.,63, an attorney who practiced law in Baltimore and served as deputy chief of staff to Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, died of a heart attack Sept. 29 at his Albuquerque, N.M., home. The native of Florence, Ala., graduated from Howard University Law School and was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1964.He served as an assistant state attorney general and joined the firm of Weinberg and Green in the 1970s, and was a trustee of Goucher and Villa Julie colleges. He founded D&H in the 1970s, a firm that offered investment planning, public relations and import-export sales.

Dr. Milton J. Layden, a retired psychiatrist, died of complications from Parkinson's disease Sunday at the Jewish Convalescent Home in Pikesville. He was 90, and lived in Northwest Baltimore and Guilford. He practiced on the staff of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and saw patients at his office in the Wynnewood Towers Apartments on Cold Spring Lane. He wrote Escaping the Hostility Trap, a book published by Prentice-Hall in 1977. Born in Baltimore and raised on Whittier Avenue, he was a 1930 graduate of City College, where he played on the tennis team.

A potentially significant new approach to the treatment of Parkinson's disease has been discovered by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.Neurologist Mahlon R. DeLong and his colleagues are reporting in today's edition of the journal Science that destroying a small number of cells in a particular region of the brain of monkeys produces "dramatic and immediate" improvement in the animals' conditions. Monkeys that had Parkinson's symptoms of uncontrollable tremors stopped shaking and were able to use their limbs within one minute after the treatment.