AlphaMale

Yearning to breathe free

The most famous lines of "The New Collosus," the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty, are these:

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

That last line seems perfect for an Alpha with lung disease, doesn't it?

The guys who did this video thought so, anyway. The two-minute video ends with an image that can't possibly be legit.

But it looks pretty convincing, doesn't it?

Full Tilt Boogie...

...is the name of a song by singer/songwriter L.J. Coon.

It's also a line dance, created and performed by 75 or so people with COPD who are dancing to draw attention to COPD and how good an idea it is to do something fun -- like dancing -- to keep yourself active and fit.

Katelyn Harding at the COPD Foundation interviews Donna Lee, one of the line dance's creators, here.

Or hear the song and see the line dance.

Blood on the cover

There's a new cover for the Alpha-1 Coded Testing (ACT) brochure.

Here it is.

Q: Is that a good cover photo?

The brochure tells about the Alpha-1 Coded Testing Study at the Medical University of South Carolina. If you'd like to get tested for Alpha-1, but you're afraid to have the test on your medical record, you can get free, confidential testing here, thanks to the Alpha-1 Foundation.

The cover shows Michael Campos, MD, lifting lung cells, including Alpha-1 cells, from a super-cooled tank at his lab. Somebody suggested the cover photo SHOULD show a finger and a card with three little spots of blood on it. You need to do a home finger-stick and donate three spots of blood for the test. You get a little kit that makes it easy and painless, (I tried it; I wasn't sure I'd done it till I saw a little drop of blood forming at the tip of my finger.)

But a picture of blood might scare people off. No?

What do you think?

Two days left

Two days left to speak up:

If you haven't given your opinions on the Alpha-1 Community Survey, you have just two days left to do it. The survey is easy to do. It only takes about 10-15 minutes.

The survey is for Alphas and Alpha-1 carriers only. (Any wannabe Alphas out there are out of luck.)

You can do it here.