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The Parkinson Alliance seed grant program aims to fund pilot studies which produce findings which will in turn be used as a basis for applications for substantial NIH grants financed by Udall act money. This is a great way to use leverage to our benefit and to hasten the arrival of a cure. Since we are the people who will benefit from this, then by putting aside $1.00 a day toward the seed grant money, as Margaret Tuchman proposes, we help ourselves. Other people won't do nearly as much for us. The people who donate the most to causes are the ones who have the greatest connection to them. By Margaret's estimate, there should be 1000 PARKINSN list members + one family member for each list member + 15,000 support group members = 17,000 people making pledges of $1.00 per day for 1 year. The estimate of the number of people with PD in the US is in the neighborhood of 1 million or more. This means there is a vast number of people with a stake in this plan who are not on the listserv and not in support groups and who don't know about this program. How can we reach a significant portion of this vast group of people and by doing so increase the involvement in the plan several times over? Publicity is one way. Here's another, possibly crazy, but very simple, idea. What do you think? There is a theory known as "six degees of separation" according to which, if you contact everyone you know, and each of them contacts everyone they know, and this is done six times, just about everyone on earth gets contacted. I don't know the math behind this, but it's a suggestive concept. It means taking word of mouth as far as it can go. It should be possible to identify and involve more PWPs and their families by using this theory. The procedure would be to contact everyone you know and ask who they in turn know that you don't know who has PD (or who they in turn know who knows someone else, etc.), and when another PWP or their family is identified, could they be put in touch with you so that you could explain the program to them? If everyone could contact and involve just one more PWP in this way, then we would double our investment. Two more, and we triple it. Phil Tompkins Hoboken NJ age 61/dx 1990