Study Helps Unravel The Tangled Origin Of Lou Gehrig's Disease
Thursday, April 3, 2014 - 12:32
in Health & Medicine
After playing in every game for some 14 years in baseball, Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees - "The Iron Horse" - took himself out of the lineup because his manager wouldn't. He had been dropping balls, unable to get to routine plays, hitting in the low .100s, shuffling rather than running. A month later he was diagnosed with the disease that would become synonymous with his name - that he had been able to do any sports at all, much less Major League Baseball, with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - ALS - is startling to doctors and patients today. Two years later he was dead but today, as many as 30,000 Americans are living with it. read more