Terry Pratchett donates $1m for Alzheimer's research

Best-selling fantasy writer Terry Pratchett, who announced in December that he has a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's, has pledged $1million for research into the disease.

In a speech given ealier today at the Alzheimer's Research Trust Netowrk Conference in Bristol, Pratchett said that he compliments his conventional treatment with various unspecified alternative remedies, in the hope that he can slow the progression of the illness:

The NHS kindly allows me to buy my own Aricept because I'm too young to have Alzheimer's for free...But, on the whole, you try to be your own doctor. Teh internet twangs night and day. I walk a lot and take more supplements than the Sunday papers. We talk to one another and compare regimes. Part of me lives in a world of new age remedies and science, and some of the science is a little like voodoo. But science was never an exact science, and personally I'd eat the arse out of a dead mole if it offered a fighting chance.

Here's the rest of the speech.