Lou Gehrig's Disease In Major League Baseball

During 1938 baseball season, a great and prominent baseball player named Lou Gehrig noticed his performance on and off the field was not what it was supposed to be. He found himself stumbling over curbs and when running bases, he was more tired than usual, and he was fumbling the ball. On June 19, 1939, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) on his thirty-sixth birthday. In the same year, Lou Gehrig retired from baseball, still considering himself to be the luckiest man alive and having a lot to live and be thankful for. Two years later he gave in to the disease and died on the second of June in 1941. Later, amyotropic lateral sclerosis came to be known as Lou Gehrig’s disease in America. Another notable person with ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, aside from Lou Gehrig, is Stephen Hawking. He has miraculously survived for more than fifty years with the disease, having received a prognosis of having just two years left to live by his doctor. He was twenty-one when he was diagnosed, which is quite a bit younger than the average age of patients. The disease obviously progressed a lot slower than it was predicted and he is still alive today at the age of seventy-three, as of April 2017. Hawking is a brilliant physicist and has contributed to the scientific world quite extensively. Although motor neuron disease is a more general term covering a number of similar diseases, ALS is also known as motor neuron disease, particularly in English speaking European countries. ALS is one of the most common and deadliest of motor neuron diseases. The word “amyotrophic” is derived from the Greek “amyotrophia”. Breaking it down explains why it makes sense. The “a” part means no, “myo” means muscle, and “trophia” means nourishment. “Lateral” refers to the spinal cord area where affected nerves are located. “Sclerosis” is defined as hardening of tissue. Throughout history, not much has been done with ALS. It is a mysterious disease, and it cannot be cured to this day. It can be slowed down by a little – extending life by months at best – but doctors are unable to do much to change its course. The first description of it dates back to 1824, done by Charles Bell. The term “amyotrophic lateral sclerosis” was first used by Jean-Martin Charcot in 1874. The disease is rather rare and has not had, and does not have, a great impact on human life and comfort on a large scale. In the USA, there are around 12,000 people diagnosed with ALS. That means a prevalence of about four cases per 100,000. There are an estimated two per 100,000 new cases of motor neuron disease in the world. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis attacks nerve cells in the brain, spine, and brain stem, called motor neurons, that …show more content…
The other ninety to ninety-five percent are sporadic, occurring for no apparent reason to no apparent ethnic or racial demographic. Age does seem to be a factor, with most cases happening to people 60-69 years old. Younger and older people can and do develop it, though. People with the sporadic type do not pass it on to their children. There have been clusters of cases in certain demographics. There have been concentrated cases in football players, both American and European kind of United States players, Italian players, and English players. Scientists believe that ALS is caused by a combination of external and genetic factors, but external factors have not yet been …show more content…
There is one FDA approved drug, called Riluzole, for treatment of the disease. It is not extremely effective and adds just two to three months on average to the life of patients. In this disease, treatment focuses on treating symptoms and making life easier for the patient and their caretakers. Radical treatment of symptoms is usually decided in advance, where patients decide whether they will want to prolong their lives by certain means if the quality of life renders it not worth it. These decisions address, but are not limited to, whether patients will want to go to such lengths as being revived if they have lung failure in the later stages, whether they would donate organs to research, whether they would want a feeding tube or not, and where they will want to live out the remainder of their years – at home, hospice,