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I was born and raised right here in Los Angeles where I continue to live today. In a city this size - 7 or 8 million people - though I was part of one of the largest high school graduating classes in the city (we were the first of the "baby boomers," and there was 1200+ in our graduating class), in the many years since my graduation from University High School, I've never run into anyone else from my graduating class. Last evening, members of my PD support group (the San Fernando Valley group) got together another PD support group to have dinner and a social evening out together. This was the second time we've met like this, and over a dozen people had a very enjoyable evening. One couple from the other group even drove an hour to get to the restaurant on order to join in the fun. While chatting, we ended up discussing where we'd each gone to high school. Imagine my surprise when the fella from the other group said that HE had graduated from University High School. We were even more surprised to find we had graduated TOGETHER in the spring Class of 1960 and that we'd not known each other at all during the three years we'd gone to school together. Tho with a such a huge class, it's not that surprising that we hung 'round with different groups of friends and our paths never crossed. We all joked about was "obviously" there was "something in the water" at UniHi, 'cause here was 2 people who were there at the same time with the same crummy disease in later life. I've been thinking about that and wonder if any research has been done within a limited group such as a high school or college graduating class to see the numbers of individuals having various diseases, i.e., how make people have had cancer, how many have had heart disease, diabetes, MS, lupus, etc. and of course, how many have had Parkinson's Disease. I wonder if there's been any demographic studies done in any country, or state of a large group of individuals who grew up in the same area, attended the same schools, to see what the breakdown of diseases amongst them was and what the ratio of people having each specific disease was. Does anyone of ya know if this type of study HAS been done and if so, what the results were? Heck - maybe it WAS the water! <rueful smile> Barb Mallut [log in to unmask]