The man who discovered DNA, Frederick Miescher, was a young physician who worked in the laboratory of physiological chemistry of eminent scientist Felix Hoppe-Seyler. At the time of the discovery he was 25 years old and had not long graduated from his studies.
A little over 5,600 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with ALS each year. (That's a new victim every 90 minutes.) It is estimated that as many as 30,000 Americans have the disease at any given time. 80% of the people with ALS are men and 93% of patients are Caucasian. Most people who develop ALS are between the ages of 40 and 70, with an average age of 55 at the time of diagnosis. However, cases of the disease do occur in persons in their twenties and thirties.
ALS is extremely rare, affecting only about two out of every 100,000 people, according to the ALS Association [source: ALSA]. About 5,600 people are diagnosed with the disease in the U.S. each year, and between 20,000 and 30,000 people live with it at any one time [source: ALSA]. What exactly causes ALS isnât known, but researchers are learning more about the disease all the time. In most cases (90 to 95 percent), there is no known cause, and the disease is called sporadic ALS. In the remaining cases (5 to 10 percent), the disease is passed down through families, and is called familial ALS.