Match It for Pratchett

I’ve had this post on my “things to post about” list for a week or so, but I didn’t want it to get lost amongst all the flyballing excitement. I’m still not really sure how to post about it; it’s not a dog thing, it’s not a dog charity, charity isn’t something I want to really discuss on my blog, but it is something that really made me sad and I wanted to mention it somehow.

Most of you already know I’m a big Terry Pratchett fan, I’ve spent way too much money on the Discworld series over the past couple of years (if you haven’t read them, you should!). To quote from another website and summarise:

Terry Pratchett, author of the bestselling Discworld novels, has been diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer’s. He has donated half a million pounds (approx $1 million) to Alzheimer’s research and appeared in the media highlighting the low levels of research funding Alzheimer’s receives.

And when they say low levels of funding, they really mean it.

It is a shock to find out that funding for Alzheimer’s research is just 3% of that to find cancer cures.
Mr Pratchett’s donation is in recognition of the urgent need to provide funding for research into the disease, which affects an estimated 700,000 people in the UK. For every person with Alzheimer’s, £11 is spent each year on UK research compared with £289 for each cancer patient, even though similar numbers of people are affected.

You can read the speech that Terry gave to Alzheimer’s Research for a more comprehensive and coherant view of his situation. Since the announcement, fans have decided to try and match the donation given, and have set up http://www.matchitforpratchett.org/ and as of March 18th have raised or helped raise around £34,000. I think the general feeling is that even though there will be no cure for Alzheimer’s in time for this person, if we can help boost the research funding just a smidge there might be a cure for someone (maybe even one of us) in the future. The comparison with Cancer Research is not about undermining what they do or what cancer patients have to go through, but there are (some) cures for (some) cancers, and there is a lot of hope. Alzheimer patients have very little to hope for by way of a cure.

And yes, I’m not just posting and doing nothing. I gave £5 this morning, which means I won’t be going to the cinema this week and I still have £1.40 change to spend tomorrow at Selby.

I will now resume normal broadcasting on undermybed.co.uk — expect some serious flyball reports from this weekend.