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Barbara Brock wrote: > he ... had put the number of Parkinson's patients at 500,000 and > had stated the annual cost to be $6 Billion, I wrote him to ask for > a correction. You might do the same because we know that there are > really between 1 and 2 million people affected. Barbara, I have been reading some of the reports of epidemiological studies trying to determine where the "1 million" (or more - it keeps growing - do I hear 3 million?) comes from, and here's what the data, such as it is, seems to point to, more or less. The number of patients (people in treatment) is better known than the number of people affected. 500,000 could very well refer to an estimate of the number in treatment. Those affected would include people in treatment plus substantial but unknown numbers of people with symptoms who are not diagnosed plus those with neurodegeneration of the substantia nigra but no outward symptoms yet. Phil Tompkins Hoboken NJ 60/9