Best-selling fantasy author Pratchett rallies Alzheimer's fight

LONDON (AFP) — Best-selling British author Terry Pratchett, who is battling Alzheimer's disease, has donated half a million pounds towards research into the debilitating brain disease, he said Thursday.

Pratchett, 59, whose fantastic fiction Discworld books have sold 55 million copies worldwide, said insufficient funds and the perception that Alzheimer's was a "fairly quiet" disease compared to cancer were stalling efforts to discover more about it.

Funding for Alzheimer's research in Britain was only about three percent of the amount spent on fighting cancer, he told BBC radio.

"If like me you have a rare variant the national health service really isn't set up to deal with you."

But he said low funding for Alzheimer's care and research "was not the fault of politicians, it's how we see the diseases."

"There is a kind of heroic glamour about the battle against cancer. We ...