Alexander Thatte is a young boy in the UK, the son of two physicists at Oxford University. He has leukemia, and he needs a new, expensive treatment. To raise funds, friends at the Oxford physics department have put together SkyPhoto: you can buy a framed print from the venerable Palomar Sky Survey, and funds go toward Alexander’s treatment.
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The prints appear to look pretty nice, and they are semi-random: you can request a star field, a galaxy, or a nebula. There are added options too, like having them signed by Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell, who co-discovered pulsars in the 1960s. They are currently accepting checks (in UK pounds Sterling) only; you can download and print out the order form. They will ship overseas, however. There may be eBay auctions soon, so you can get them that way as well (and use PayPal if you’re set up for it). I’ll update this post when I find out more.
‘Tis the season, and this makes a pretty nice gift. Plus, you know you’re doing something good for someone, too.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:09 pm
What? Doesn’t the UK have Universal Healthcare? Why isn’t the NHS picking up the tab? I am not trying to be snarky or anything; I really want to know.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:28 pm
BA,
If you know these folks, have them set up a paypal account. It would make ordering real easy for us non-UK folks.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Thomas a presume this for experimental treatment, not country funded by the NHS?
December 1st, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Thomas,
Although the UK does have a national health service funds are limited. All treatments available on the NHS must be approved by NICE whose primary role is to determine whether a treatment is cost effective, based upon “cost per quality-adjusted life year gained”. Consequently, a treatment that can treat multiple people will be favoured over one that can cure a single person assuming the same cost. (Obviously this is an over-simplification but you get my point)
December 1st, 2008 at 8:24 pm
“Consequently, a treatment that can treat multiple people will be favoured over one that can cure a single person assuming the same cost. (Obviously this is an over-simplification but you get my point)”
I don’t want to see even one human being allowed to suffer while medical science has the power to stop the suffering.
On the other hand, I’m reminded of the feel-good story circulated in the States a few years ago of an infant pair of conjoined twins flown to the USA and surgically separated at the cost to charitable donors of about a million and a half USD. That sounds like humanity at its best, but then I wonder how many deep wells in desperate nations a $mil and a half could drill, bringing safe drinking water to thousands of children otherwise doomed to drink other people’s sewage. Or how many jabs that mil-and-a-half could buy to immunize tens of thousands of children around the world from the most preventable diseases such as whooping cough, etc.
Here’s a page describing some of the easily preventable childhood diseases:
(http://www.idph.state.il.us/about/vpcd.htm).
We are a world out of balance when we shout in triumph over saving a handful of lives while turning our backs on tens or hundreds of thousands of lives lost that we had the ability to save, but did not.
I want to live to be 150, but if my emergency thorax transplant costs as much, when I’m 110, as five thousand whooping-cough immunizations for people struggling just to get enough food, then let me go and save those thousands.
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:57 am
According to the website he’s in hospital (presumably an NHS hospital) right now after receiving a stem-cell transplant from his mother at the end of November. I have to say that I would need to know more about this experimental antibody treatment before I would even consider making a donation – e.g. is it a legitimate experimental treatment or, for example, some quack exploiting a vulnerable family with a load of woo-woo? Perhaps I’m too suspicious but I’m unhappy that their website is asking for money for the treatment yet says almost nothing about it.
December 2nd, 2008 at 3:40 am
@csrster:
Following the link from the SkyPhoto webpage to Alexander’s CaringBridge page:
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/alext
Look at the My Story section and you’ll see that he is being treated in Germany after the NHS decided to stop treating him in England. Look up the doctor treating him, Dr Rupert Handgretinger, on google and you’ll find (e.g. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/54294.php and http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521825191 ) that he is an expert on the treatment of childhood leukemia, not some callous woo-peddler.
December 2nd, 2008 at 4:06 am
On the main web-page about Alexander it talks about his treatment being part of a research program in Germany – see http://www.caringbridge.org/cb/viewMyStory.do?method=executeInit
If this research program is successful it will benefit many other little children beyond Alexander.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:01 pm
The BA noted :
“There are added options too, like having them signed by Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell, who co-discovered pulsars in the 1960s.”
What a co-incidence! Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell is speaking today in my hometwon of Adelaide, South Australia!
The details if any other Sth Aussies are reading here & see this in time are :
***
Below is notification of a special presentation to be given in Adelaide on the 3rd of December. Jocelyn Bell-Burnell is legendary in the field of astronomy & physics. I last heard her speak some 8 or more years ago and I highly recommend you attend this rare event to hear an astronomer of such high calibre. For those of you who are not familiar with her work visit :
[the Wikipedia site for her by clicking on my name here!]
Please pass this information on to others.
Regards Paul
The 2008 Australian Institute of Physics Congress
… presents
A Free Public Lecture : “Pulsars and Extreme Physics”
By Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Visiting Professor Oxford University Astrophysics, UK.
Wednesday 3rd December at 5:30pm @ Elder Hall, North Terrace, University of Adelaide.
Abstract : Pulsars, or neutron stars, are bizarre objects involving extremes in many aspects. This talk will introduce pulsars and discuss some of their properties.
Brief Biography :
Dr Burnell graduated from the University of Glasgow with a B.Sc. in physics in 1965 and received her Ph.D. from New Hall of the University of Cambridge in 1969. At Cambridge, she worked with Hewish and others to construct a radio telescope for using interplanetary scintillation to study quasars, which had recently been discovered (interplanetary scintillation allows compact sources to be distinguished from extended ones). Detecting a bit of “scruff” on her chart recorder papers that tracked across the sky with the stars, Bell Burnell found that the signal was regularly pulsing, about once each second. Temporarily dubbed “Little Green Man 1″ the source was eventually identified as a rapidly rotating neutron star. After finishing her PhD, Bell Burnell worked at the University of Southampton (1968-73), University College London (1974-82) and the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh (1982-91). In addition, from 1973 to 1987 she was also a tutor, consultant, examiner and lecturer for the Open University. In 1991 she was appointed Professor of Physics at the Open University, a position she held for ten years. She was also a visiting professor at Princeton University. Before retiring Bell Burnell was Dean of Science at the University of Bath between 2001 and 2004, and was President of the Royal Astronomical Society between 2002 and 2004. She is currently Visiting Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Mansfield.”
(NB. This info. comes via Paul Curnow from the Adelaide Planetarium out at Mawson Lakes & the SA Astronomical Society’s Publicity Officer.)
***
I’ll be going to that & then the Astro Soc’s meeting so in for a big night astronomy-wise.
Been a good week for happy co-incidences too – I turned on the morning news just in time to watch the shuttle ‘Endeavour’ landing live on Aussie TV!
… Well okay it didn’t land on the TV but rather at Edwards airforce base with that being shown on the TV!
December 5th, 2008 at 2:31 am
And you can now pay for your skyphoto with paypal!
December 6th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
[...] SkyPhoto, the charity to raise money for a boy with leukemia, is now accepting PayPal. So you can now buy a [...]
December 8th, 2008 at 12:40 am
I suppose that the endorsement of the Oxford Physics Department _and_ Jocelyn Bell-Burnell is a good sign that the treatment is part of a respectable research programme. However, Pravda, in my defence I will point out that the “My Story” section says that the treatment he received _in 2007_ was from Prof. Handgretinger, in Tuebingen. It wasn’t clear to me that his new course of treatment is at the same unit.
December 9th, 2008 at 2:45 am
Some of the more impressive objects are being auctioned on ebay (Andromeda, Orion nebula, sombrero galaxy, etc.). Go to ebay.co.uk and search for skyphoto.