September Named Tay-Sachs Awareness Month
The Senate this July voted unanimously to name September National Tay-Sach’s Awareness Month. The resolution was introduced by Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and co-sponsored by Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana. At this point, Tay-Sachs, a hereditary degenerative neurological disease, has no cure. The National Tay-Sachs & Allied Diseases Association, Inc., the oldest genetic disease organization in America, has endorsed Brown’s resolution.
The initiative was set into motion by an Ohio family with a daughter suffering from the disease. The Bihns of Olmsted Falls wrote to Brown and proposed the measure as a way to increase awareness and raise funds for research. Tay-Sachs is always fatal in children, with many not living beyond the age of 5. Dakota Bihn is 9. September is seen by the Bihns as a starting point for 12 months of fundraising — with a goal of $1 million.
“Tay-Sachs is a devastating disease that is often overlooked and misunderstood,” Brown said. “This disorder requires our close attention. The more people who are aware of the risk posed by Tay-Sachs, the more lives we can potentially save.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO