“Part of me lives in a world of new age remedies and science, and some of the science is a little like voodoo, but science was never an exact science, and personally I'd eat the arse out of a dead mole if it offered a fighting chance.”
"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."
... "Care services for Alzheimer’s disease cost the UK more than cancer, heart disease and stroke combined."
Nice to see our health service has its priorities straight, then. http://www.paulkidby.com/news/index.html has more details. 
Edit: There are 700,000 sufferers in the UK, which spends £11/head on research. This year at least, then, because of this donation, it'll be slightly over £12.40 per head instead. That's more than 10% of the nation's research funding coming from just one guy. That's just plain scary. Why are the government not funding this research? The tax cost of looking after the sufferers is massively higher than that!
[Edit2 - $1M, not £1M - my bad. Fixed! That's still 6.5% from a single person!]
Re: Pratchett donates £1M to alzheimer's research.
Sadly, it was only a million dollars (USDs being monopoly money at the moment
) so it's only £11.70 per head because of PTerry but still.... 5% down to 1 guy.... Like he said, "I'd like to kick a politician in the teeth!"
Lee Alley
"I could tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel"
Re: Pratchett donates £1M to alzheimer's research.
Lee's right: £0.5M. But YOU can help take it up to £1M!!!
Pat Cadigan has a campaign going to get half a million fans to donate £1 each to Alzheimer's research, matching the funds put up by pTerry. The campaign's called "Match it for Pratchett!"
Today, it was announced that Terry Pratchett has donated half a million pounds to Alzheimer's research. Hearing that, it occurred to me that if half a million of us all donated a pound to Alzheimer's research, we could match his donation and make it an even million.
So whaddaya say, guys? It's a pound. That's about 2 bucks US dollars, give or take a couple of (US) pennies. You can spare that much. Go here and make your donation. Tell them it's in honour of Terry Pratchett.
Let's do it!
Edit: Just donated a tenner. Which, by the magic of GiftAid, will become £12.80 for all UK residents or people who claim to be UK residents.
I put "Match it for Pratchett" in the "more info" section - dunno if they're tracking it, doubt they are, but still - cool if they are.
Unfortunately, since the donations are going direct to them, there's no way to tell when we hit the target... but I'd hope that for half a million, they'd be willing to let us know if we hit the target!
Yet another geek.
Re: Pratchett donates £1M to alzheimer's research.
It's a bit sad that pTerry had to be hit by it before we noticed... But that hasnt stopped me reacting exactly the same.
MS
"LOOKS PERFECTLY LOGICAL TO ME"
Re: Pratchett donates £1M to alzheimer's research.
Apparently a third of their donations came from donations in peoples' wills. Which is kinda sad. It also seems like a bit late, y'know? I think pTerry's got the right idea there, donate BEFORE it gets you, then you might have a little more of a chance...
Yet another geek.
Re: Pratchett donates £1M to alzheimer's research.
There's also an auction of prop/books/goodies:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220211906562
Bidding's already at more than £2,000 but I'm sure it'll go way higher. Proceeds going to Altzheimer's Trust.
[Those of you who read BoingBoing will by now have realised it's where I get all my info about this stuff from :D]
"Hi, Just spoken with production team who made the Luggage and it is about 2ft wide by 16" deep by 16" high. Weightwise it is about 8-10 pounds.The box is made from solid pine,and the feet are made from nylon filled with polyester wadding.There are four solid feet which are concealed inside nylon covered legs. Hope this helps, please let me know if you have any other questions."
Yet another geek.