http://www.refresheverything.com/hannahshope <You don't even have to read. Just go there and vote. Hey guys. At another forum I visit we have been trying to get everyone we know to vote for this charity that will receive $250,000 from Pepsi if they place in the top 2. I took an excerpt from that forum: Hannah is one of my personal friend's cousin and she is diagnosed with Giant Axonal Neuropathy (GAN). This is a rare neurodegenerative disorder and Hannah's Hope is the only organization in the world raising money for this disease. The money goes to fund a GAN gene therapy clinical trial. These funds will be used to pay for a Natural Disease History Study that will be conducted at UNC at Chapel Hill. If GAN (GD) is deemed both safe and effective, we want it approved for long-term use to impact generations to come. In order to achieve this, we must show the FDA this treatment altered the natural, untreated course of the disease. Additionally, these funds will be used to pay for pre-treament evaluations and testing of clinical trial participants, as well as to assist with the enormous expense of gene therapy vector manuf. to treat the patients with during the trial. We were very close last month and are currently in first place. You can vote once a day and the winner will be announced at the end of December. All you have to do is visit the link and vote by logging into facebook or your pepsi account. I know you guys are passionate and would love to help out. Thanks, because I know you will!
Genetic disease research? Sure, I'll vote. Incidentally, anyone who want to help with medical research without going to medical school can download a program called folding at home. Folding@home is a distributed computing project. Basically that means a lot of computers all around the world act like a hive, more powerful than any supercomputer. Folding@home's goal, is to model the way proteins fold and misfold. The way these proteins fold and misfold is thought to be responsible for Parkinsons, BSE, and many types of hereditary cancers. All you have to do is have a little application running. It won't slow your computer down. folding.stanford.edu
Sounds like a cool organization, but how is me or anyone else running a an application on my computer supposed to hellp in the research of proteins?
Because the way these proteins fold and misfold is incredibly complex, it has to be modeled on computers through complex image rendering. There simply aren't computers powerful enough to do all the rendering done. So it's being achieved through distributed computing. This is a list of results that have been achieved by the folding@home project. http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Papers
Not to sound like a dick, but why should I vote for this? It seems to me that this 250k is going to help a very small, specific group of people if it wins (it's a rare disorder). The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few... I'll be voting, but my vote goes to #6 (Save the lives of premature and critically-ill infants).
Well it did say that the research would be published and helpful to other medical projects involving spinal chord disabilities. It's really a drop in the bucket either way. But at least it actually helps a bit. Not like changing your facebook avatar to a cartoon character...
