Dying Doc: Don't Keep Me Alive

Physicist offers advice for living with disability

(NEWSER) - When you can only speak by twitching your cheek toward words flitting past your screen, you don’t tend to do a lot of interviews. But Stephen Hawking sat down with the New York Times last month to talk about his life, aliens, and health care. Some highlights:

• On aliens: Contacting aliens is asking for trouble; they might be so advanced “that our civilization might not survive the experience.” But if they make first contact, it’s a different story. “I have no doubt that if we are ever contacted by such beings, we would want to respond.”

Study: ALS is sometimes misdiagnosed

(NEWSER) - A new study has found that some patients diagnosed with ALS actually suffered from a different fatal disease that affects the central nervous system—and implies that Lou Gehrig himself may not have had ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The study's review of the spinal cords of three deceased athletes found that they did not actually have ALS, and that the ALS-like disease they succumbed to was caused by concussions and brain trauma. More»

'Coding error' to blame for ALS mistake

(NEWSER) - Because of an error, the Department of Veterans Affairs incorrectly notified 1,200 veterans they had ALS, the fatal neurological condition also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, the AP reports. The letters alerted the veterans to disability benefits available to those who suffer from the disease. Thought the VA has not yet commented on the slip-up, the VP of the National Gulf War Resource Center said a “coding error” was to blame. More»

(NEWSER) - Major League Baseball will honor the 70th anniversary of Lou Gehrig’s “luckiest man” retirement speech tomorrow, part of a campaign against the disease that now bears his name, the Newark Star-Ledger reports. “It’s one of the great moments in American sports and, arguably, American popular culture,” a professor says of the speech, immortalized by Gary Cooper, playing Gehrig, in The Pride of the Yankees. More»

Doctors, poorly trained in breaking bad news, also procrastinate

(NEWSER) - Doctors and patients are prone to procrastinate when it comes to tough end-of-life decisions, according to a Harvard study. Researchers found that only about half of the 1,517 terminal lung cancer patients surveyed had discussed hospice with their doctors within four to seven months of their diagnosis. Hospice care focuses on keeping a patient comfortable, rather than curing the illness, the Boston Globe notes. More»