Parkinsonism and Related Disorders 7 (2001) 149±155 Parkinsonism & Related Disorders 1353-8020/01/$ - see front matter q 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S1353-8020(00)00082-1 www.elsevier.com/locate/parkreldis An open letter to the Committee on The Nobel Prize in Medicine We are pleased to see that your Committee has recognized the work on brain dopamine and its relation to human health and illness. The winners of the Year 2000 Award for Medicine have all made major contributions in the basic neurosciences, with two of them in the ®eld of dopamine. We offer them our warmest congratulations and wishes for continued success. As members of the Neurological community and members of Parkinson's disease related patient organizations, we feel that one prominent scientist, Professor Oleh Hornykiewicz of Vienna, Austria, should have been included in this Award. Our daily life makes us acutely aware that it was the work of Hornykiewicz, which established the vital link between the basic discoveries of dopamine and the mechanisms of brain disease in human beings and their treatment. Without that link even the most remarkable laboratory discoveries cannot realize their potential and may thus remain futile or even be forgotten. In 1960, Hornykiewicz for the ®rst time analyzed a large number of fresh brains of neurologically normal individuals and of patients with various basal ganglia diseases and unequivocally established that marked striatal dopamine de®ciency was characteristic of Parkinson's disease. One year later, he reported the successful use of levodopa in 20 Parkinsonian patients. These two observations comprising basic studies of human brain and clinical pharmacology, by the same individual within the span of two years, were thus extraordinary. His observation formed the basis of levodopa therapy in Parkinson's diseaseÐto say nothing of the stimulus this work has given to countless, analogous studies in many other neurologic and psychiatric disorders. Since the original work Hornykiewicz has made many other seminal observations to better understand the extrapyramidal diseases. Today, 40 years later, levodopa remains the most effective drug for Parkinson's disease. Due to the direct impact of levodopa, to date there are more than 31 million person years of remarkably improved human life in Parkinson's disease. The spirit of the Nobel Prize for Medicine has been to take into account the discovery that `conferred greatest bene®t on mankind'. When we consider all the developments related to chronic neurological disorders made in the last 50 years, none matches the magnitude of the bene®t conferred on mankind by the discoveries of Hornykiewicz. We, as those who are directly seeing the continuing bene®t of Hornykiewciz's discoveries, feel stronglyÐalso on behalf of those who have enjoyed the bene®tÐthat we owe him this open statement of acknowledgement both as a sign of our own gratitude and on behalf of the many millions of patients throughout the world. ABBRUZZESE, Giovanni, M.D. Italy AGID, Yves, M.D. France ALBANESE, Alberto, MD Italy ALF, Claude, MD Austria ALLEN, Richard, PhD USA AMAR, Khaled, MD, MRCP United Kingdom ANDRADE, Luiz A. de, MD, PhD Brazil ANG, Lee-Cyn, MD, FRCPC Canada ANGELINI, Corrado, MD Italy ARCHER, R.L., MD USA ARUNODAYA, G.R., MD India BALTZAN, Marcel, A.O.C., S.O.M., FRCP Canada BARAL, KulaksizogÆhi, IsËin BARNETT, Henry, J.M., M.C., MD, FRCPC Canada BERGAMASCO, Bruno, MD Italy BERGER, Michael, MD Austria