Ride For Life

The ALS Association issued the following statement on the Food and Drug Administration's recommendations to reauthorize the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA). more...

World renowned British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who suffers from ALS, wants to go a place he has only theorized about in his long career: space. "This year I'm planning a zero-gravity flight and to go into space in 2009," he was quoted as saying in the Daily Telegraph newspaper.more...

ALS patient and sports car fan Edward Puletz got a birthday surprise from over 50 Corvette enthusiasts. more...

An Austin woman is planning an ambitious three months starting in March. She plans to walk from Austin to Boston to help spread awareness for the disease that claimed her mother's life.more...

A jury took less than seven hours of deliberation to convict a New Jersey doctor accused of bilking thousands of dollars from patients who believed she had a cure for Lou Gehrig's disease.more...

Stem cell scientist Hynek Wichterle tackles Lou Gehrig’s disease in a privately-funded lab outside the public eye.more...

Cambridge University theoretical physicist Prof. Stephen Hawking has decided to donate DNA samples to the Human Genome Project in the hope that the data will help scientists identify the causes of Lou Gehrig's disease.more...

Fitness mogul Augie Nieto has awarded a $500,000 grant for research and treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at UC Irvine.more...

World renowned Cambridge University theoretical physicist professor Stephen Hawking may have arrived in Israel last week to give lectures and promote British science, but he left learning something as well. With its advanced work in both embryonic and adult stem cell research, and its proven track record with neurodegenerative diseases, Israel may become a leading world research center in ALS.more...

U.S. scientists, working with a common form of brewer`s yeast, say they`ve discovered a novel protein function that might cause neurological disorders. more...

Across the country, children go about providing home health care to parents, grandparents or other relatives. They suction breathing tubes, change catheters, and run steroids through IVs. These children assume household chores at early ages, preparing meals and doing laundry for a parent who can't. In many ways, the care they provide mirrors or exceeds the tasks that often overwhelm adult children caring for an elderly parent.more...

Andy Eddowes still has muscle enough in his face to wince at the idea of having ALS before the age of computers. The muscle-wasting disease - known in the medical world as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - already has worked its way through the legs, arms and hands of this 46-year-old retired Navy captain, and partway through his voice. But as is the case with most people with the disease, his mind is marvelously intact. Just through the lingering sensation left in his fingertips and neck muscles he can download and play his favorite music. He can e-mail Navy buddies from the air squadron he once commanded. He can read books and magazines. He can research his disease to find out what comes next, then order equipment that will help him to stay in the game when only his eyes can move. It's a far cry from what predecessors with his disease were left with in their final stages: Blink once for yes, twice for no. more...

The Muscular Dystrophy Association will provide free flu shots to people with any of the more than 40 neuromuscular diseases in the Association's program. Having a progressive neuromuscular disease that damages the muscles responsible for lung function makes influenza much riskier. The flu is particularly dangerous for those with ALS. more...

One cold December afternoon in 2004, Scott and Tammy Brown’s daughter Lauren came home from school worried, confused and full of questions. “Some of our friends had found out, and their daughter is one of Lauren’s good friends. So, the little girl was on the bus and told Lauren, ‘Your mom is dying.’” Tammy, 34, says, nervously shifting in her wheelchair and glancing at her husband. “It wasn’t something we were prepared to tell yet. They (Lauren and son Logan) know, but it just happened.” Of course, Lauren, then 8, wanted answers that day and the Browns responded in turn – “Sissy, your mother has ALS and that is why she’s had trouble walking, it’s not anyone’s fault, everything is going to be all right.” But what Lauren didn’t ask (and what the Browns themselves had yet to realize) was how much the family would spend on Tammy’s medical care during the next two years. The cost of sick today, they would learn, is astronomical.more...

The Medical University of South Carolina's new ALS clinic, which officially launches today, is the first of its kind in the state, and one of about 25 across the nation. The clinic will offer one-stop shopping to patients with the disease - visits with neurologists, physical and occupational therapists, speech and swallowing specialists and dietary experts, all during one daylong visit each month.more...

Two boys whose lives have been changed forever by their dad's ALS are featured on a calendar. more...

Phyllis Swigart said she and her husband, Ken, have had their faith tested before in life, but they feel as though they are now facing their final exam. And they don't plan to fail. The couple has remained unwavering and prayerful, even as Ken has been diagnosed with ALS. In a very short time their whole lives have changed, and the couple knows even more difficult days are ahead of them. more...

Paul Gould's appreciation for classical music was plain to see on his face as he listened to his friend, Leah Claiborne, play the piano for his enjoyment a few days before Christmas. A former chief financial officer for Frick Co. in Waynesboro, Pa., Gould has been a resident at Western Maryland Hospital Center in Hagerstown for the past two years. Gould, 67, has ALS.more...

Twenty years after Steve Smith helped Penn State win the 1986 national title, the former fullback is fighting for his life. Smith's body is failing him, ravaged by Lou Gehrig's disease. Former college teammates are coming together to help the former Nittany Lions captain, who went on to play for the Raiders from 1987-93more...

While Julie Brizendine may be in a wheelchair, those who love her and care for her say she’s the same woman they’ve always known. Those with physical disabilities have more physical demands, says Brizendine’s caregiver Leah Willis, but their desire to fit in and have relationships is as real as anyone else’s.more...

Particle physics pioneer Bernard Gittelman, 74, Cornell University professor emeritus of physics, died in Ithaca on Nov. 25, the university reported. The cause of death was ALS. Gittelman was a pioneer in the design and development of storage rings at the Wilson Synchrotron Laboratory at Cornell. He led in the design and construction of the CLEO detector, the multi-university collaboration devoted to exploiting the production and decay of new particles containing heavy quarks from the Cornell Electron Storage Ring. more...

From December 1998 when Stephen Heywood was diagnosed with ALS to Sunday morning November 26, 2006 when he passed away with his family and friends Stephen lived a lifetime.

As his ALS progressed toward complete paralysis, Stephen, a vigorous artist builder, began a journey that compressed time. Over the past eight years he built and rebuilt three homes, including his own and a carriage house that is more art than structure. He trained apprentice craftsmen when he could no longer use his hands. He inspired others to imagine and build his designs when he could no longer use his voice. Stephen took joy in the feel of the materials and the art of the forms as they became reality.

In 1999, Stephen and his brother Jamie founded ALS TDF, the world's first non-profit biotechnology company, now widely recognized as the leading edge in a new breed of institutions that are changing how treatments are developed for disease. Today, ALS TDF is the world's leading ALS research center and has defined new standards for quality and effective research.

All of us at Ride for Life and on behalf of the ALS community extend our deepest sympathies to the Heywood family.more...

Keith LeClair, East Carolina University's former baseball coach who inspired many while facing the crippling effects of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), known as Lou Gehrig's disease, died Monday. He was 40.more...

When an ALS patient in the Chesapeake Support Group was having an especially bad day, invariably the phone would ring or an e-mail would pop onto the person's computer. It would be from Bob Echols. "He worried more about others than he did himself," said Cathy Easter, Virginia regional director of the ALS Association's DC/MD/VA chapter. Echols died ofALS May 6 at age 54, after uplifting hundreds of friends and strangers. more...

Robert T. Brain, a founder of the small local credit union that became the hugely successful Wescom, died Tuesday at his Pasadena home with his family present after a long battle with Lou Gehrig's disease. He was 75.more...

A US study has found that neural stem cells repair damaged brain tissue in laboratory mice far better than previously believed, a finding that could translate into treatment for stroke and other trauma.more...

A Medical College of Wisconsin research team has applied for a patent on its work to isolate, grow, and identify a new type of adult stem cell that, much like embryonic stem cells, appear to have the potential for diversification. The readily-available adult stem cells are found in the bulge of hair follicles. more...

ALS also took the life of Jennifer Estess. Her family, frustrated over how little was known about the disease, founded Project ALS, which led to the creation of a privately funded lab that works with the most controversial of biological materials -- human embryonic stem cells.more...

After more than two years of intensive ethical and scientific review, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers at Harvard and Children's Hospital Boston have been cleared to begin experiments using Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) to create disease-specific stem cell lines in an effort to develop treatments for a wide range of now-incurable conditions afflicting tens of millions of people. more...

Project A.L.S. today opens the first privately-funded lab to focus exclusively on the study of stem cells to treat ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and related motor neuron diseases, announced Valerie Estess, Research Director for Project A.L.S.more...