Why your donation is so important to ALS patients.

ALS steals. It steals the ability to run, walk or move in the slightest way. It robs victims of the capacity to speak, smile, laugh, hug, eat, drink and, in the end, even breathe.

ALS steals everything - including the money necessary to care for a pALS (person with ALS) and that needed to fund a secure future for their loved ones.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is an expensive disease. All the numbers associated with ALS are frightening. Some are alarmingly small. Others are distressingly large. Among the depressing small numbers are an average life expectancy of only two to five years. The fact that every 90 minutes someone is diagnosed with ALS and someone dies of it. And finally, this: There is only one drug approved by the FDA for the treatment of ALS.

At the other end of the spectrum are the impossibly large numbers - the estimated $2,000,000,000 it will take to develop a drug to slow or stop ALS. Or $250,000, which is the estimated annual price tag to care for a pALS.