San Francisco-born actor Eric Dane is becoming the new face of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig disease, turning his devastating diagnosis into a way to educate the general public about the fatal and progressive neurodegenerative condition and to offer people living with it some hope.
For the past two days, the “Grey’s Anatomy” alum and “Euphoria” star has appeared on “Good Morning America” to tell Diane Sawyer how he’s “fighting” to stay healthy and active as long as he can. The actor told the ABC News journalist that he’s part of a research project and is taking medication in order to try to slow the effects of ALS.
However, Dane, who became famous playing handsome, strapping Dr. Mark Sloan on “Grey’s Anatomy,” also revealed that he’s already lost the use of his right arm and may soon lose the use of his left. “There’s so much about it that’s out of my control,” acknowledged Dane, speaking someone slowly and carefully.
On Tuesday’s episode, Dane’s physician, Dr. Merit Cudkowicz, a neurologist and leading ALS researcher, appeared alongside him to insist that there’s hope for people with the disease, even as she warned that the number of people being diagnosed is growing “too fast,” with some estimates suggesting an increase of as much as 40% by 2040.
Around 5,000 people are diagnosed with ALS each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sawyer cited another “alarming” study by epidemiologists, published in Nature, which also predicted a steady increase in ALS cases in the coming years.
Cudkowicz, chief of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, told Sawyer that the rise in cases is predominantly due to ageing of the population, particularly among developing nations. However, she also said that research is being done into whether environmental factors, such as exposure to heavy metals or bacteria in lakes, are linked to ALS.
“Everybody is worried about plastics for neurodegenerative diseases, you know, Alzheimer’s disease, as well as ALS,” she said. “We worry about head trauma because we do see ALS more common in people in certain sports like football or soccer. We worry about pesticides as well.”
“Being in the military is a risk factor,”Cudkowicz added. “Those are the ones we know about, but there’s many more we don’t know about.”
Those with the disease have a life expectancy of three to five years after the first symptoms appear, according to the ALS Therapy Development Institute. It causes muscle paralysis, with patients losing their ability to speak, eat, walk and breathe independently. There is currently no effective cure or treatment to stop the disease’s progression.
Dane said Monday that his symptoms began more than a year ago, when he began to experience weakness in his right hand. The weakness got worse, and he saw two hand specialists and then a couple of neurologists before he received his ALS diagnosis.
“I’ll never forget those three letters,” he told Sawyer of the diagnosis.
Cudkowicz said her hope for people with ALS stems from medical discoveries currently being made, such as a breakthrough drug that can slow or halt the disease in about 10% of patients who have a particular genetic variant. “So it tells us it’s possible. If you can get to the root cause of the illness, you can make a big impact,” she said.
Unfortunately, Dane said he didn’t have that variant, but he’s still willing to try anything if it will slow the progress of his ALS.
“I will fly to Germany and eat the head off a rattlesnake if (doctors) told me that that would help,” he told Sawyer with a laugh. “I’ll assume the risk.”
Dane, who played water polo at San Mateo High, publicly revealed this diagnosis in April. The day before Dane’s announcement, his wife of more than 20 years, actor Rebecca Gayheart, told E! News that she was withdrawing her divorce petition, which she had filed back in 2018 but never tried to finalize. Dane and Gayheart share two daughters, 15 and 13.
With Dane’s diagnosis, he and Gayheart aren’t a couple again, but he told Sawyer that she has become his biggest champion.
“I talk to her every day,” he said. “We have managed to become better friends and better parents. And she is … probably my biggest champion and my most stalwart supporter. And I lean on her.”
After losing his father to suicide when he was just 7 years-old, Dane said he is “angry” that ALS may also take him from his daughters too soon.
“I’m angry because, you know, my father was taken from me when I was young,” he said. “And now, you know, there’s a very good chance I’m going to be taken from my girls while they’re very young.”