March Madness: Huntingdon’s Disease
Not that you aren’t already paranoid enough about getting sick or going insane, but now we’re going to take a look at a little known illness called Huntingdon’s disease, also known as Huntingdon’s chorea. It’s a gradual disease that kills off brain cells in large numbers. It causes the victim to lose bodily coordination, the ability to take care of himself and eventually, all reason. It is not a contagious disease.
It is an inhereted disease. Symptoms don’t set in until you are about 40. They come on gradullaym kind of like the gradual set in for multiple schlerosis. You start dropping things, maybe keep bumping into furniture more often. Now, there is a genetic test to see if you have the gene. If you do — please don’t have kids, or they will have a 50-50 chance becoming like the victims in this CBS news report:
Here’s a short clip of a person with Huntingdon’s, which shows some of the usual symptoms. In her case, she cannot control many parts of her body.
Perhaps the most famous person every to have Huntingdon’s disease was singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, who died in 1967. This was mentioned in a brief painful recreated scene in Alice’s Restaraunt (1969), where son Arlo Guthrie visits his father in an asylum. It is unknown whether Guthrie was able to recognize anyone around the time of his death.
I couldn’t find that scene on YouTube, but I did find this slideshow from “algeva” of Woody Guthrie’s “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You.” I thought it was appropriate.
Leave a Reply