Real American Hero
 

Real American Hero
Posted October 7, 2007 | 09:23 PM (EST)


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Read More: dollar4life.org, Lou Gehrig's disease, prize4life.org, Breaking Living Now News



Once a Captain in the Israeli Defense Force, Avichai "Avi" Kremer arrived at Harvard Business School (HBS) in the fall of 2004 -- strong, solid, ready to take on the world. He was just 29. Before long, Kremer noticed he was having some difficulties with his hands -- cramping and trouble lifting weights. Doctors told him not to worry too much -- it was likely stress. But within his first semester of graduate school, Kremer was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). Life expectancy: two to five years.



"Chai" (as in Avichai) means "life" in Hebrew.


And so, Avi Kremer has devoted the precious time he has left in life to fearlessly pursuing a cure for ALS. In his second semester at HBS alone, he raised $150,000 from students and faculty for ALS research at Massachusetts General Hospital. In his homeland of Israel, little is known about his disease, so he took off school the following fall and became CEO of IsrA.L.S., a not-for-profit dedicated to promoting ALS research and which, by the end of 2005 (in just a semester) had raised $2 million to finance research at six Israeli universities. He founded a biotech company called Avi Therapeutics to pursue early stage ALS discoveries, organized a conference to connect academic ALS researchers with biotech and pharmaceutical executives and now, though in a wheelchair and with slurred speech, is finishing his MBA because he refuses to let the disease take that from him.


He also launched prize4life.org (Harvard classmates Nate Boaz is CEO); this organization is offering a $10 million prize to draw attention to the need for/create a buzz around the need for a cure. Boaz sometimes speaks for/helps Kremer speak (one of the most cruel aspects of ALS is that while the body wastes away, the mind stays sharp as a tack.) Each year over 128,000 people contract ALS and the same number of people die from it; it typically strike between ages of 40 and 60.


Now, Kremer is giving people a couldn't-be-easier way to help. It's a grass roots campaign called dollar4life (please link to http://www.dollar4life.org) and asks nothing more than that you donate one dollar and pass this message/his website on to friends. One dollar. You may have given this much money to a homeless person while walking down the street. Or pumped four quarters in a parking meter while you had lunch. Or tipped it to a valet who ran to get your car. Kremer cannot walk, eat by himself of drive a car. Kind of makes one dollar seem ridiculously doable. (You can also watch and listen to Kremer in a video on the web site. His words are painful but determined and brave.)


I'd encourage you to visit www.dollar4life.org and donate a buck...or more. Each donation will light up a pixel in an online portrait gallery of ALS patients. With your help, one million pixels will light up and brighten the life prospects of ALS patients everywhere. As Avi puts it, "The power of one, times a million, can help us find a cure."


I'm not sure about you, but I know that all too often, I take my body for granted. The fact I can walk, run, dance -- I just do it without thinking. Much of the time, so many of us spend time directing hatred towards our bodies, trying to slim down, lose weight, look "better" -- but really, what is better than a healthy body that works when we want it to? Stories like this make me realize we need to say "Thank you" to our bodies. I think donating to this cause is another way to say Thank You.


* If you would like to contribute with a check, please make it payable to Prize4Life, Inc. and address it to: P.O. Box 381708, Cambridge, MA 02238-1708. Prize4Life, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) organization and donations are tax-deductible.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie...o_b_67505.html