Part 5 · Context & review
History & people
ALS was described in Paris in the 19th century, became known to the public through a baseball player in 1939, and was explained at the level of genes and proteins mostly after 1993. Press Play to run the playhead from 1850 to today, or jump between eras. The scene redraws itself as each era arrives.
The scenes are drawings, not portraits. Every caption in them repeats a milestone listed below, with its sources in the note panel. The axis is compressed before 1935 and again from 1935 to 1990, so the crowded recent decades stay readable.
Every milestone
The dots on the timeline are also listed here as buttons, so each can be reached with the keyboard or a switch and read in order.
Exam hookCharcot named ALS: amyotrophic (muscle wasting, lower motor neuron) and lateral sclerosis (hardening of the lateral columns, upper motor neuron). 275 Five dates: 1874 the name · 1993 SOD1 · 2006 TDP-43 · 2011 C9orf72 · 2023 tofersen. 137,149,392,448,456
In plain wordsALS was named in France about 150 years ago. For a century doctors could describe it but knew little about its causes. Most of what is known about the genes and proteins involved was found in the last 30 years, and in 2023 a medicine aimed at one gene, for SOD1-ALS, was approved in the US.