Sunday, March 25, 2007

Huntington's disease pioneer Wexler dies

IMedinews

SANTA MONICA, Calif., March 24 (UPI) — Psychoanalyst Milton Wexler, heralded for his work with Huntington's disease researchers, died earlier this month in California at the age of 98.

The Hereditary Disease Foundation founder, who began working on the disease after it ravaged his wife's family, succumbed to pneumonia on March 16 in Santa Monica, Calif., the New York Times reported.

I became an activist because I was terribly selfish, he had said in 1999. I was scared to death one of my daughters would get it, too.

Wexler's wife not only contracted the disease, that is always fatal, but her father and three brothers had all died of Huntington's earlier.

After creating the foundation, related researchers determined the approximate location of the gene for Huntington's disease in 1983 and within a decade they had identified it.

The Times said Wexler is survived by his daughters Alice and Nancy, who have both offered their own expertise to fighting the neurological disorder.

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