Lou Gehrig May Not Have Had Lou Gehrig’s Disease
Written by Ann Pietrangelo on August 17th, 2010 in Extras, Health Care Policy, In The News, Linked Articles.
Lou Gehrig may not have had “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”
The New York Times is reporting on a peer-reviewed paper in Journal Neuropathy suggesting that baseball legend Lou Gehrig may not have suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at all, but from a fatal disease caused by concussion-like trauma that erodes the central nervous system, producing similar symptoms. When Lou Gehrig died in 1941, ALS was commonly known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”
The Times points out that the paper does not specifically mention Gehrig, but “its authors in interviews acknowledged the clear implication: Lou Gehrig might not have had Lou Gehrig’s disease.”
Read the article (with Gehrig’s farewell speech video):
Lou Gehrig May Not Have Had Lou Gehrig’s Disease
Photo: Harris & Ewing Collection at the Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons
