Terry Pratchett is donating $1m to Alzheimers research after being diagnosed with Posterior Cortical Atrophy, a rare form of the disease.
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.
God damn it, what am I going to read when he’s too ill to come out with stuff like that? Even when he’s facing a serious debilitating disease he’s still funny. And why isn’t there enough money being put into Alzheimers research? There seems to be plenty for piss useless things that we don’t want but not for saving peoples’ lives.
Technorati Tags: Terry Pratchett, Alzheimers
I think the funding should be allocated the following way: Education, Health Science, Defence, Law and Order, Pensions, other necessary things, and only then, IF, i repeat – IF some money is left then they may be given to the abusers of asylum and relatives of illegal immigrants.
Of course, the number of cancer sufferers far outweighs the number of Alzheimer’s sufferers, so it’s right that the funding should be skewed.
Next question: Why just $1m?
There seems to be plenty for piss useless things that we don’t want
Like the new scottish parliament building that the egotistical scottish had to have. Four hundred and forty million quid werent it? Technically, only a small minority wanted that building built; they still got it though! Plus, they had a perfectly acceptable building to house the members of parliament in; but chose to waste nearly half a billion constructing a new one!
Ah yes, there’s always enough money for nuclear weapons, foreign wars, ailing banks that need bailing out, huge expenses for parliamentarians, bonuses for bosses… human need comes far down the list.
There’s plenty of money to save lives, Wonko, but it’s all in Sc*tland and Wales.
Actually 6000, if you look at the per head numbers Alzheimer’s sufferers get £11 per person and cancer sufferers £289 per person. And you can bet most of that cancer money goes on breast cancer as the most high profile disease.
We probably need a more accurate rundown on expenses than this, because there are lots of different cancers, they will get lots of differnt funding sources.
I’d like to see, say Lung Cancer funding vs Alzheimers funding vs MS funding, that might be a bit more revealing.
Also Alzheimers treatment and support will be lumped in with mental health services budgets, so that dooms it to the abyss
Good for Terry Pratchett. Even though I don’t think he’s in the least funny, and got fifty pages into just one of his books before throwing it across the room in contempt, he’s decided to try to do some good with the wealth he’s amassed. He’s soared in my estimation through this action, not that he’d care one way or another about that, I’m sure. Would that more people would do something similar.
I’m absolutely staggered, though, that anyone can try to turn this topic into some kind of pity-bidding-war between different life-threatening illnesses. You should be ashamed of yourselves. The same goes for those who’ve used the topic to make tedious attacks on other countries, or people from other countries, but they probably don’t have enough self-awareness to feel shame in the first place.
Who examines the doctors, Allie? Who gave you the right to judge people who express their opinions?
The General Medical Council regulates doctors, Scaffold. However, we’re talking about mdical research, which is something different. That comes under the Medical Research Council. Anything else I can help you with?
Did I have to be given the right? Everyone else who posts here seems to seize it for themselves.
I seem to not have understood that regarding doctors I was not talking literally! lol
To 6000 – you’re now more likely to have someone close to you get diagnosed with alzheimers than die of cancer (of any kind) – really! 163,000 new cases of dementia occur in England and Wales each year – one every 3.2 minutes. And there is absolutely no kind of treatment let alone cure at all. 44,000 people are diagnosed with breast cancer but 80% of these survive.
Allie you’re right but the figures are so jaw-droppingly awful (dementia is expected to increase by 66 percent between 1998 and 2031 to 765,000 individuals) that Alzheimers needs support.
Check the figures on http://www.alzheimers-research.org.uk which only deals with research – its the one terry pratcett is supporting. Good luck to him!