ALS or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's) disease is a motor neuron disease that has been 100% fatal. My father died of ALS in 1974 and he apparently had the familiar form of the disease because I contracted ALS in 1995. I had done considerable research when my father had the disease trying to save his life. As in the old saying "Necessity is the mother of invention," I frantically researched the disease. Insulin that treats diabetes was discovered by a doctor who's wife had diabetes and by his discovering the bodies insulin shortage as the cause of diabetes he saved her life. In my case I was too late with my discoveries to save my fathers life because he died 18 months after his diagnosis of respiratory failure even with a permanent tracheotomy. In my case I have been able to hold the disease ALS in check. I have been able to arrest the advance of ALS to the beginning stages of the muscle loss controlling my right thumb. This was the beginning stage for both my father and I. My father was the most studied case of ALS at the University of Washington hospital at that time. ALS is a disease that even if you cure the disease the damaged motor neurons will not recover so the condition the patent is in when the is arrested is the condition the patient will retain. That condition reversal becomes another problem. I do believe that ALS changes character after the initial stages and I am especially looking for persons in the beginning stage of their involvement to try my regime. I now feel that all ALS is probably the same form but that it changes character as it progresses. The muscles that have atrophied controlling my right thumb because of the loss of motor neuron stimulation are still gone. There was a time when I felt they were coming back but I now feel that it is the other muscles surrounding the ones that have atrophied that are stronger and compensating. I have approached several doctors about my condition and atrophied muscles. The best they can say is they think the diagnosis in my case was wrong. They have talked about testing me with another EMG and a MRI scan to make a study. This has not happened though because they believe my regime was to easy and they hate being upstaged by someone else. The loss of muscle control in the thumb is one of the easiest to recognize beginning signatures of ALS. I have had 5 GP doctors tell me they recognize the condition. During the second world war and in every war since there has been an statistically unexplainable percentage of veterans return with the ALS symptoms. Grizeofulvan was invented during the second world war because tremendous outbreaks of fungal infections in the Philippines. None of the soldiers who died of the ALS symptoms they acquired during that war were given Grizeofulvan. The same relationship was noted in all later conflicts from Korea to Vietnam to Iraq. Several years ago I published some of my findings in different publications including "Bob Broedel" at the ALS Digest. I am published in volume 611- 4 in 1999. A copy can be read by visiting the ALS digest or viewing the ALS Digest 611 page on the left to read of my regime. Copies of all ALS digests can be found at http://www.glnicholas.com/. Bob Broedel can be contacted by email <bro@met.fsu.edu>. Another good ALS site is

You can contact me Sherman Smith alsforum@hotmail.com