Yeah well I enjoy ranting but have gotten to do eversolittle of it thus far on Wikepedia because of the whole infernal Wikiquette thing I couldnt resist the opportunity to indulge a little  Heres the dilly or part of it on dopamine melanin and Parkinsons Dopamine and melanin have very similar structures and dopamine metabolism produces a form of melanin called neuromelanin which is different from eumelanin pheomelanin et cetera but still certainly a melanin Neuromelanin gradually accumulates in the neurons of the substantia nigra throughout a persons life Kids have very little elderly people have lots When people get Parkinsons they start losing their neuromelanin and their SN goes pale The fairly recentlypublished histology and pathology books Im using just take it for granted that the loss of neuromelanin is basically a sideeffect of dopamine depletion But I may have been a little too confident in assuming that thats the final word I just checked the National Library of Medicine website and a bunch of new research is turning up more immediate connections between neuromelanin and Parkinsons than had been suspected Also it looks like theyre also getting promising results in studies on therapies that involve endocrine manipulation of neuromelanin Still all of this specifically involves neuromelanin in the dopaminergic neurons of the SN and I havent personally learned heard or run across anything stating that there is any connection whatsoever between skin melanin and Parkinsons But I guess the take home message for me is that there is more going on here than I realized so I cant write off the possibility that there is alsothough I cant imagine howsome emerging connection between neuromelaninParkinsons and a persons skin melanin levels Anyway as you say this article is about melanin generally not just skin melanin in humans so regardless the Parkinsons link is legit