About Me
My name is Greg Hood. I am a computer scientist, and I worked at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center for almost 30 years. Among the areas that I have worked in are fMRI, realistic neural simulation, and image registration of large electron microscopy datasets. My amateur interests include tropical botany, horticulture, book collecting, architecture, and woodworking. For most of my life, I was a very outdoors-oriented person, and was an avid hiker and kayaker.
Starting around 2020, I had a number of vague symptoms, including muscle aches, mild dizziness, and swollen hands. I was told this was from PPPD, persistent postural-perceptual dizziness. However, when the balance problems became worse and my speech started to become affected, I knew it was something much more sinister. In May 2023 I was officially diagnosed with MSA-C (multiple system atrophy – cerebellar type), though I had suspected it for months. (The long wait times for neurologists offer a lot of opportunity for Internet research.) This is a rare horrible neurodegenerative disease with no known cause, no treatments, and no cure. I have a particularly aggressive form with faster than average progression rate. I tried various diets (including the restrictive Wahl’s Paleo Plus diet) to no avail. In December 2023 I synthesized the experimental drug emrusolmin (aka ANLE138b) in my basement lab. After having confirmed its purity by sending out a sample for NMR spectroscopy, I took it for one month (9 capsules/day, total dose ~150mg ANLE138b/day in Gelucire 44/14). It had no effect at all on my perceived progression rate, so I discontinued it. Emrusolmin is currently in clinical trials (TOPAS study) by TEVA/MODAG as of Fall 2025. I wish others better luck with this.
These web pages are a work-in-progress. They are subject to change at any time, and I may add to them as my health permits. Some days, however, nothing gets done on them. For non-commercial use, you should make a local copy of anything you care about, because I don’t know how long they will remain up. For commercial use, go to my Contact page.