Parkinson's disease affects more than a million Americans and 120,000 Britons. The causes of this chronic, degenerative neurological disorder are largely unknown, and a cure proves frustratingly elusive.

In 2002, FRONTLINE correspondent Dave Iverson received the news that he had the disease. Tragically, this diagnosis, coming just months after the Bush administration imposed restrictions on potentially life-saving stem cell research, had already been delivered to both his father and his brother. This film follows Iverson as he embarks upon a personal journey to learn more about Parkinson's.

The remarkable people he meets along the way include a researcher who works with heroin addicts, a geneticist who is helping to identify some of the genetic mutations responsible for the disease, and a sufferer who has undergone experimental brain surgery. Iverson also carries out an intimate and revealing interview with actor Michael J Fox about his own experience of Parkinson's.