This week in NeuroChem we discussed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, which is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that causes degeneration of motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. When the motor neurons degenerate scarring occurs, which causes sclerosis, hardening of the spinal cord. Since these neurons can no longer function properly, the brain is unable to initiate and control muscle movement. Individuals with ALS eventually lose the ability to breath, eat, speak, or move, and eventually die from this disease since there is no cure.
If you had a history of ALS in your family, would you want to be tested to see whether you had the gene and could potentially develop ALS? Personally, I would not want to know, because I wouldn’t want that knowledge to consume my life and spend my time waiting around for the disease to kill me. But the issue also arises, if you knew you could potentially develop ALS, would you want to have children and risk passing it on to them? I know I would feel like a horrible parent for passing ALS onto my child.
Currently, not a lot of money is being spent on ALS research compared to cancer research, so the question remains, even though there is not a large portion of the population suffering from ALS should more money be allocated to ALS research in order to find a cure? There is an estimated 30,000 people suffering from ALS in the United States, so even though there is not a lot of people suffering from ALS compared to an estimated 14.5 million people currently suffering from cancer, that doesn’t make it any less important. With this being said, I think that ALS should be made a higher priority in the field of research.
It is important that we, as a society, promote ALS research. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is currently the most successful promotional campaign for ALS research. The Ice Bucket Challenge has allowed the ALS Association to double their annual budget, which has helped them to fund more research projects. Hopefully, through increased awareness of ALS and monetary donations, there will be a cure found for ALS in the near future!
References
http://www.alsa.org/
http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@editorial/documents/document/acspc-044552.pdf
ALS: More is still to come…
