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Perhaps someone has better figures on the incidence of PD. The Parkinson Wed says over a million in the USA have it, and 20 per 100000 of population develop it each year. There is a view that we are asymptomatic until the disease(defined by deterioration of neurons) has progressed considerably. This is consistent with the observation of some of us that certain ambiguous symptoms appear years before diagnosis (thus "asymptomatic" above is not the best adjective). In my own case, over 25 years transpired from when I first began to lose my sense of smell and when I was diagnosed. ALso, after diagnosis, people who knew me thought I had a PD personlity for years. What this means, if true, is that there are many people who will be diagnosed in the future, such that if you count a million people with the disease today, there are a large number of people who have the disease in the "asymptomatic" stage, and others still who will develop the disease (and go through an aymptomatic phase.) Two points. (1) We should not use the million figure, if it means those who are now diagnosed; the actual figure of those having the disease is much larger. (2) We should encourage development of early techniques of diagnosis during the early asymptomatic phases so that a) when progression-slowing drugs are available, they can be used in the early stages, and b) those who know that they with some probability are going to have the disease in the future, will feel a vested interest to support research into the causes and cures of PD. Are you aware of any accurate figures on what percentage of those in the USA will get the disease and any successful methods of early diagnosis that can be used as mass screening. I have heard of smell tests, and motor tests, as well as the unwieldy PET scans.