Help raise money for Alzheimer's Disease!

Accera, Inc.'s new campaign, "Lost & Found," is an on-line initiative whereby each visit to www.lostandfoundcampaign.com prompts a $1 donation by Accera to support the Alzheimer's Foundation of American (AFA).

By simply selecting an icon representing something they have lost or forgotten that day, at no cost to individuals, the selection will trigger an Accera donation to AFA. The funds generated throughout this initiative will be donated to AFA on November 17, "National Memory Screening Day," to further AFA's efforts to support individuals with Alzheimer's disease their families.

National Memory Screening Day, an annual initiative sponsored by AFA, provides free, confidential memory screenings to individuals concerned about memory loss with the objective of early detection and intervention. Qualified healthcare professionals offer the face-to-face screenings at convenient locations in communities across the nation.

"Lost & Found" submissions will be accepted on-line through November 13, 2009.
(Accera, Inc. is a privately held commercial-stage biotechnology company that developed and now markets Axona in the US. Axona is a prescription-only medical food intended for the clinical dietary management of the metabolic processes associated with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease.)

Happy birthday

Today would have been my dad's 69th birthday. I hope wherever he is, he's happy.

Terry Pratchett and assisted suicide

Terry Pratchett, a British fantasy author and one of my favorites, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's just days after my dad died.   He has given loads of money to research and been extremely outspoken with what is happening to him.   Now he says he wants to die in his garden, listening to his I-pod, on his own terms.
He says, "I live in hope - hope that before the disease in my brain finally wipes it clean, I can jump before I am pushed and drag my evil Nemesis to its doom, like Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty locked in combat as they go over the waterfall." 
When we put Nutter to sleep last September, I cried there at the vet's, my hand on his back, as the life went out of him.  But he was suffering and we loved him and it was the last gift we could give him.  How horrible to be denied that when it's a human you love and who is suffering.

Sir Terry says that 'right-to-die' campaigners trying to change the law on suicide are acting with 'furious sanity'. He calls for the creation of special tribunals run by coroners to establish that terminally ill patients who request assisted deaths are acting voluntarily.

Evidently they are trying to pass laws regulating assisted suicide (so it's not prosecuted as murder) and 75% of people polled agree that it's the right thing to do.
It's obvious to me, reading this long article by Sir Terry, that he still has wit and imagination plenty.

We would not walk away from a man being attacked by a monster, and if we couldn't get the ravening beast off him we might well conclude that some instant means of less painful death would be preferable before the monster ate him alive.

Screenprint of original article