Best-selling fantasy author Terry Pratchett is to donate $1m for research into Alzheimer's disease.
The creator of the Discworld series was diagnosed with a rare early-onset form of the disease in December. Pratchett, 59, will announce the pledge of about £494,000 at the Alzheimer's Research Trust annual conference. Telling leading dementia specialists of his determination to find a cure, he will say: "I intend to scream and harangue while there is time."
He is also quoted as going to say:
Personally, I'd eat the arse out of a dead mole if it offered a fighting chance. I am, along with many others, scrabbling to stay ahead long enough to be there when the cure comes along.
Say it will be soon - there's nearly as many of us as there are cancer sufferers, and it looks as if the number of people with dementia will double within a generation. In most cases, alongside the sufferer you will find a spouse suffering as much. It is a shock to find out that funding for Alzheimer's research is just 3% of that to find cancer cures.
That number translates (according to the article) ~700,000 people in the UK have Alzheimer's disease with £11 per patient per year spent on research into the disease. If you have cancer (in the UK) you get £289 / patient / year.
Sigh. My Paternal Grandmother had early onset Alzheimers in the 40s or 50s and ended up in an asylem as she couldn't be cared for at home: She was younger than her husband by 15-20 years (I forget) and he couldn't care for her. They were both dead before I was adopted when Dad was 40.
"I am, along with many others, scrabbling to stay ahead long enough to be there when the cure comes along."
I find that one line close to hearbreaking. For anyone, not just one of my all time favorite authors.
And it goes for so many diseases. And it is so expensive to find those chances, those vauge hopes to find out if that one, maybe, is the one that will help ease or even cure a particular suffering.
Dried Frogs Pills anyone?
[this is good] It is a pity, that now I can not express - I hurry up on job. But I will return - I will necessarily write that I think on this question.
Posted by: Leon Barnette | 2010.05.01 at 14:44